


I'm Still Here

by Cordria



Category: Danny Phantom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-13
Updated: 2019-10-13
Packaged: 2020-12-14 15:53:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 43,257
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21018347
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cordria/pseuds/Cordria
Summary: Buried in the backyard, Danny's locked away in a forgotten Thermos. When it's finally found seventy years later, Danny is released and he needs to learn to deal with his new life. Can he survive what the future can throw at him? (originally posted to Fanfiction in 2008-2009, posted here in 2019. Not yet edited)





	1. Prologue

Danny screamed into the nothingness, wishing desperately that he could form hands and feet to beat against the inside walls of the Fenton Thermos. No doubt it wouldn't have made much of a difference even if he could have beaten himself bloody, but he still wished he could. It would have given him something to do in the blankness of this place. He knew his yells and screams would go unheard by other ears, since he didn't have a mouth to make noise with, but he still called out in fear and the incredible desire to be free of this small container.

He struggled, nothing more than a mist of condensed ectoplasm and consciousness, not accomplishing anything but tiring himself out. _Let me OUT!_ Round and round he whirled, his mind tracing the exact contours of the tiny Thermos over and over.

100 cubic inches. 600 cubic centimeters. His entire body compressed into a space about a hundred times smaller than usual. It was painful to even contemplate that it could be true, much less to have it actually happen. It didn't physically hurt, being in the Thermos, but the thought that it _should_ hurt captured his imagination and made him ache. His entire body crammed into an area smaller than a box of tissues. He would have shuddered if he'd been able to.

He couldn't see, he couldn't feel, he couldn't hear, he couldn't taste, he couldn't smell… his whole world was defined by that timeless nothingness. There were no cracks in the Thermos; there would be no escape.

He wondered if he felt movement, but it was probably all in his mind. A half-thought sound brought him up short from his endless circling, his mind poised on a cliff and focusing on the outside world. But there was nothing – no sound, no light, no indication that anything was happening. For all he knew, the Thermos might have been dropped off a building, buried underground, or been lost in one of his parents' messy desks. There was no way to tell, no way to know.

Finally he settled down, tired from running in circles, eyeing the lid of the Fenton Thermos with his mind like a cat crouched and waiting for its prey to move. Minutes passed, or maybe hours, or perhaps even days. Danny couldn't tell – the Thermos was a piece of the world exempt from the normal forces of the universe. Neither time nor gravity held sway in his tiny world.

Surely Sam, Tucker, or Jazz would release him. Even his parents, hell-bent on experimenting on him now that he had been captured, would have to open the lid at some point. They wouldn't be able to run tests on a ghost locked away in a Fenton Thermos. It might take a few hours, maybe even a few days, but someone would set him free.

Someone _would_ set him free, he knew it.

And so he waited.


	2. Chapter 2

The first hint of Danny's impending freedom came an indescribable amount of time later. It could have been mere seconds, it could have been months – there was just no way of knowing or putting the passage of time into words. The hint came from a tiniest bit of motion in his small world… a swirl, a slight expansion of his universe, nothing more.

The Thermos's lid was being unscrewed. Danny, having sunk into the dreamy stupor of boredom, blinked and sank back on his mental haunches, ready to run the moment he materialized in the real world. The possibility of it being his parents who were finally opening the Thermos was too high for him to stick around. He needed to get away, then figure out where he was and what to do next.

The small movements stopped and suddenly the lid was wrenched open. Blue light cascaded around Danny like angel's fire and his formless body was thrown from the confines of the Thermos. Even as his body appeared around his mind, he was trying to move, trying to run. But instead of running, his exhausted limbs collapsed underneath him and he fell to his hands and knees. _Grass. Dirt._ He was outside.

He glanced over his shoulder, a moment of fear that his parents would be behind him with some sort of weapon, ready to strike. His brain took in a snapshot of what his eyes were seeing: _two young boys, covered in dirt, one holding a shovel and the other a rusted and dented thermos, staring at him in surprise and fear._ Not his parents, not his friends… Get away, his mind told him. Run.

His muscles finally responded to his mind's prompting and pushed him to his feet, and then into the air. Even if they weren't ghost hunters, they would call for the Guys in White or for his parents in just a few moments. He needed to get far away from this place.

Looking back only once he had reached the relative safety of the sky above the neighborhood's houses, he caught sight of the two boys still standing in their backyard, staring up at him with open mouths and wide eyes. Then he saw the house and it brought him up short. Wasn't that his house? He could still see the part of the wall his dad had repaired after blowing a hole in the kitchen wall that one time.

Except… it wasn't his house. It couldn't be. There was no Ops Center. There were none of the mounds of broken bits of technology that always littered the backyard. And who were those boys anyways? They didn't live in his house, although they probably _could_ – any normal kid would have been running in fear rather than staring up at the ghost like it was the greatest thing since TiVo. Being an idiot around ghosts seemed to be a Fenton specialty.

He shook his head: it wasn't his house, it couldn't be. They must just look the same. Pushing the strange coincidence out of his head, he drifted a little higher in the air.

Amity Park spread out before him like a map and his eyes traced down the familiar streets. After a moment of searching, he wondered what had happened to the Nasty Burger sign – he always used that as a guide to moving around town. He didn't think too much of it, however. That sign was constantly being hit by trucks trying to take a right-hand turn too sharply. It regularly fell down.

After a moment he rolled and headed towards Sam's house, his eyes half-closed, his mind reveling in the fact that he was free of that Thermos. Stupid Thermos. It was a good thing he wasn't claustrophobic, or that would have been a horrible… day? Week? Hour? How long _had_ he been in there anyways? But, no matter how long it had been, he was going to con his parents into creating a bigger Thermos. He was feeling more than a little sorry for the ghosts he captured and forced into that thing.

Or maybe he'd just smash that particular Thermos in a million itty bitty pieces. It would feel good and it would definitely make him feel better. Misplaced aggression was something that he indulged in from time and time and surely, in this instance, Sam wouldn't be able to fault him for it. Maybe he'd bring it up after Sam told him how long he'd…

He pulled up short, staring at the blank lot in front of him. His feet drifted down and touched the ground, stumbling a bit on the cracked concrete. This was where Sam's house was supposed to be. Where was Sam's house? He was in the right place, right? Looking around, he focused on the street sign at the corner just long enough to realize he really _was_ at the right place. His head turned back to the lot, sans house, filled with weeds and trash that had blown off the street.

"Sam?" he whispered, confused. Had some ghosts invaded and destroyed her house? Fear gripped at his throat for a moment. Had she _moved_? Was it possible that he'd been stuck in that Thermos long enough for Sam to have moved away? What about that date he was half-planning on asking her on… he was sure that he'd actually follow through with his somewhat plan _this_ time without putting his foot in his mouth. Eighth time had to be the charm, right?

So caught up in his own thoughts, he missed the crackle of tires against pavement and the soft woosh of a car window descending. "Kid!"

Danny whirled around, his green eyes widening in surprise. A police car had pulled up beside him and the officer was studying him with narrowed eyes. Danny took a small step backwards – Phantom and the police never meshed well, no matter what his current popularity rating was. "What?" he asked softly, keeping his eyes peeled for any kind of weapon.

"This ain't a place to hang," the man said. "Go back towards civilization." He jerked his chin in the direction of downtown.

No mention of ghosts, or Phantom, or… anything. The man had treated him normally, just like any other kid. Although Danny knew down deep in his core that he was in ghost mode – he always knew which form he was in – he glanced down. Black clothes, white boots, white gloves, glow, feet not quite touching the ground.

Danny gave a little nod and took a small step to the side, his mind working furiously. Could it be that this was a new officer? Unlikely. Maybe it was just a person who was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. Again, Danny's gut told him that wasn't the case. There was something seriously wrong with this picture. Sam was gone and now this man was treating him like a human kid. And, he thought with growing suspicion, those two kids had been living in his house. That had been his home. Just…

How long had he been in the Thermos?

His churning stomach was beginning to think it wasn't just days, or months. Years, possibly. "Wh… wha… what's the date today?" he stammered, fear clutching at his throat.

"July 18th."

Danny relaxed a little – three months wasn't that bad, not nearly as bad as he'd been thinking. It didn't really explain where Sam had gone, but he could understand three…

"2078," the officer finished.

Danny started, staring at the policeman in disbelief. "2078?" he repeated softly, terror beginning to bubble inside of him. "_Seventy years_?" There was no possible way that seventy years had passed. None. No. Sam would be eighty-something if she were still alive. His parents would be well into their hundreds. That just… No. It couldn't be.

The policeman gazed at him for a moment, his eyes narrowing. "You need a lift home?"

Danny blinked at him for a moment before shaking his head.

"Call if you need a ride, okay?" Then, without another word, the car hummed to life and vanished down the street.

"Seventy years?" Danny whispered to himself, his eyes wide with doubt. Slowly he turned around, staring at the empty lot. It _did_ look like it'd been abandoned for years, if not decades. "I'm 86?" He glanced down at his body again, but when his normal sixteen-year-old body met his gaze, he just looked back up, not knowing what to think.

For a long few minutes, maybe even hours, Danny stood perfectly still and gazed at the empty lot that screamed the truth at him. Through that entire time, Danny wrestled with his own thoughts. Could he truly have been locked away for that long? He had to have been. But… what would he do next?

He was walking, then, without any sort of idea where he was headed. His boots took him blankly through town, his whole mind suspended on one thought: _seventy years. I've been in that Thermos for seventy years._ All around him, he could see the changes that seven decades of time had brought, each place nailing home the idea that it wasn't some sick kind of joke. The movie theatre was gone, replaced by a department store. The Nasty Burger wasn't just missing its sign… the whole store was now a parking lot. Casper High was abandoned and surrounded by an orange fence with a demolition notice stapled to it. Tucker's house – actually the whole set of row houses – was gone, a new mall standing proudly in their place.

_Seventy years_. It hadn't yet struck through to his mind that he was alone. Just beneath the thought that he'd lost seventy years of his life was the image that he could just go home. But he couldn't go home, not really; there was no place to go. Sam and Tucker were long gone from Amity Park, and maybe not even alive anymore. Jazz as well. And his parents had to be dead by now. Even though his conscious mind was stuck on the idea that seventy years had passed, his unconscious mind was helping to direct his feet. His unconscious mind knew that there was no going home. Before he really knew what was happening, he was standing beside the Amity Park cemetery.

That was when he allowed himself to consciously wonder if his parents were alive. He phased through the fence and stared around him, outwardly strangely calm for a boy who was shrieking inside his own head. Winding his way between the grave markers, Danny headed towards the section of Amity Park that had been set aside for the Fenton clan. Over two hundred years of Fentons were buried in that area. When his feet brought him to the edge of the plot, marked by his great-grandfather's ugly-looking memorial, Danny stopped.

He didn't want to know what was on the other side of the monument. He didn't want to see his parents' names engraved on the little white stones. He didn't want to know for sure that he was all alone.

But he had to look. Maybe they weren't. It wasn't unheard of for people to live into their hundreds. Maybe his parents were still alive… just really, really old. Dread-filled curiosity made him move. He had to know, now. If they weren't there, it would drive him nuts for the rest of his life. He took a few steps forwards, his eyes scanning the small markers, his gaze instantly locking on two headstones. It was the names carved into the simple stone that caught his eyes.

_Jack Fenton_, one read, _born 14 June 1968: died 3 January 2054_.

The other, a bit newer, read, _Maddie Fenton – born 9 March 1969: died 19 July 2068._

Both of his parents were dead and gone, both by more than a decade. Danny took a few wobbling steps forwards, collapsing on his parents' graves, tracing his finger around the delicately etched names. Tears flooded his eyes as he finally let himself understand just what everything meant.

He'd been locked in a Thermos for seventy years. His parents were dead. He was… he was…

"Mom," he cried, wishing he could throw himself into her arms. This was too much for him. He was _sixteen_. He was just sixteen. Why did this happen to him? Why couldn't anyone have freed him? "Dad," he sobbed.

Why did they have to capture him? He hadn't been doing anything wrong that day, seventy years ago. He'd just been flying, having fun, playing around, and enjoying the pure thrill of flight. He hadn't really even had a chance to get away – they had just jumped out from behind a tree and held out that stupid Thermos. And then the blue light had overtaken him, throwing him into that timeless darkness.

_Seventy years_.

Under the onslaught of his own emotions, Danny lost control of his ghost form. His body sparkled and shimmered, then solidified into his human appearance. Black hair, blue eyes, still sixteen… the timelessness of the Thermos had affected him in both forms. He hadn't aged a single moment inside the Thermos; time had literally stood still for him.

For the longest time he sat there, not moving when the sun began to sink below the horizon and the stars came out to play. His tears dried up after nearly an hour of crying, his body exhausted from his ordeal inside the Thermos and his mind strung out by the day's emotional turmoil. Curled up in the shadow of his mothers' grave stone, Danny fell into a fitful sleep.

* * *

The sun woke him up the next day. Danny didn't bother to stretch, instead rubbing the crusty bits out of his eyes and shaking a few spiders out of his hair as he yawned. He glanced one last time at his parents' names before turning around and leaning against his mother's headstone, staring at the morning sunlight. With a momentary wish that yesterday had all been some kind of weird dream, but knowing that it wasn't, Danny set about to face the new day. _What to do now_?

The night's sleep had helped to clear his mind. His parents were gone, seventy years had passed, and the world he knew was no more. Those were facts that he couldn't run from. True, he hadn't totally accepted that – part of him was still fighting the idea tooth and nail – but he wasn't crippled by the mere thought anymore. It was a new day. There were things to do, places to go, people to try to locate.

He might be stuck in 2078 right _now_, but he had no intention of keeping it that way. There had to be a way back to his own time; back to a time when his family and friends weren't dead or scattered to the four corners of the Earth. But first…

Food was definitely on his list of things to do right away that morning – his stomach was growling. The question was how to get it. He didn't have any money and he doubted his savings account still existed – not that there had been much in it anyways. Then he needed to find some place to use as a base of operations and perhaps stay the night. His parents' old house was obviously occupied by the family of those two boys, he couldn't go back there.

Maybe Sam or Tucker were still hanging around Amity Park. Surely they'd be willing to let their old friend haunt an attic or basement for a few days while he coordinated a trip back in time. The thought of searching for his friends bolstered his spirits and almost brought a smile to his face. He never gave a second thought to the idea that Sam and Tucker would now be well into their eighties and might not even remember him.

"Hey!" a voice called sharply.

Danny looked up into the morning sunshine, blinking in surprise at two people standing before him. One was old, short grey-red hair a mess of tight curls, the other was very young, bright red hair spilling down to her waist and three flowers clenched in her hand. Both of them stared at him – the older woman's eyes glinting with suspicion, the younger one out of curiosity.

Danny wondered for a moment how he looked to the two of them. His clothes were still bloody from a fight with Dash that had been over for seventy years, one of his eyes black and bruised from an unlucky punch. No doubt he was covered in dirt from his night sleeping in the cemetery, he probably had the strung-out look of someone who hadn't gotten enough sleep, food, or happiness in a while, and he was wearing clothes that were seventy years out of style. Most likely he looked like a homeless, crazy kid. The thought brought a small, sad smile to his face.

"This isn't the Hotel Ritz," the old woman continued, one hand holding tightly onto her granddaughter's (or maybe great-granddaughter's), the other propped up on her hip. "Scram."

For a moment, Danny wondered if he should tell the two of _them_ to 'scram' – this was _his_ family and they should just bug off – but he didn't want to get into an argument his morning. He was tired and hungry. "Sorry," he whispered, pushing himself to his feet. He needed to go get something to eat anyways.

He stumbled a little on his first few steps, his legs a little numb from sleeping weirdly, catching himself on a gravestone before finding his balance. Then he moved off, stuffing his dirty hands into his pockets, his mind already on the question of how he was going to get some food. With no money, he'd probably have to steal some. That thought twinged against his conscience.

"Hey, kid," the woman called after him, her voice a lot softer than earlier. When Danny glanced over his shoulder, he saw that she was following him. "You okay?" she asked.

Danny nodded. He wasn't, really, but he didn't need to tell that to some complete stranger.

The lady stopped a few feet away from him, studying him with her narrowed green eyes, her head tipped slightly to the side. Finally she held out her hand, a twenty dollar bill between her fingers. "Here."

Danny didn't take it. "Why?" he asked softly, wondering why the crabby old woman was giving him money.

She gazed at him for a long moment before shaking her head. "Get something to eat," she said simply, shaking the bill a few times until Danny took it out of her hands. "You look like you need it."

"Thanks," Danny mumbled.

Turning on her heel, the old woman walked back towards her granddaughter. "Then go home," she shot over her shoulder.

"I wish I could," Danny whispered, twisting back around and wandering towards where he thought the mall should be. Hopefully they would have some kind of foot court that was open for breakfast. If not, maybe he could find a fast food place.

He should have stopped and looked back one last time. If he had, he would have seen the old woman take three flowers from her granddaughter's hand and place them on three graves in the Fenton section. One for Jack, one for Maddie… and one for a small headstone that read _Daniel Fenton_.

* * *

Danny paid twelve dollars and twenty-five cents for his breakfast. He'd been surprised at the prices when he had scanned the menu at the fast food place he'd managed to find. Everything was almost triple the price he remembered it being.

Now he was perched on top of the old city hall, slowly chewing the last few bites of his breakfast, deciding what to do next. He ran a hand through his white hair, sighing. There were few options at this point. He could either stick around in this time and just accept it as his fate, or he could try to get back to his own time. One of those was infinitely preferable to the other.

Incinerating the paper his breakfast had come wrapped in, Danny took to the sky, heading towards his old home. If he wanted to get back to his _own_ time, he'd need the help of the only ghost who could send him there. There was a question on whether or not Clockwork would agree to help, but Danny needed to ask. He'd beg if he needed to. And to get to Clockwork, he'd need the ghost portal.

His home was a lot harder to find without the blinding fluorescent lights and the city-ordinance-breaking Ops Center. After a few flybys, Danny was forced to actually land on the street and walk. Invisibly checking the street signs, it still took him several minutes to find his old address. He stared up at it, green eyes glowing faintly in the bright sunlight, trying to decide if this really was his house or not. After a moment, he figured it probably was. The address was right and the house looked vaguely like his.

He phased through the ground and flew towards the basement, coming into the large room just as he expected. Landing on the floor, Danny looked around at the strange room, surprised to find that it looked a lot like a normal basement when you took out all the scientific equipment and painted the walls. Boxes piled in the corner, an old couch collapsing along one wall, a card table set up with some chairs, covered in a half-finished puzzle.

The cement floor, though, told the tale of the years of it being a next-generation laboratory. Burn marks were still visible between the scattered throw rugs. The strange green stain from when Danny had dropped an experiment when he was fifteen was still there. Along one wall, where the ghost portal used to be, the cement was burned a strange emerald. In the semi-dark of the basement, the stain still glowed vaguely.

The portal itself, however, was gone.

Danny walked over to the wall, putting his hand against the boards, then phasing his head through to check the other side. It was totally filled in with dirt and cement. Taking a few steps backwards, Danny glared at the place where the portal had been, despair nipping at him. He hadn't really expected the portal to still be there. Without his crazy-ghost-hunting parents, and now in the possession of a normal family, there wouldn't be a ghost portal in the basement. No doubt it had been gone for decades. In a fit of frustration, he punched the wall, then pushed himself up into the sky.

Screaming through the air, Danny was on a bee-line for a house up in the better part of Amity Park. After all, there wasn't just one portal to the ghost zone in Amity Park. Or, at least, there used to be more than one.

"Vlad," Danny ground out, his eyes glittering and watering from the rush of air. He was going faster than usual, fear gnawing at his heels as he barreled through the sky. It had been seventy years. Vlad could have moved, or closed down his portal, or even have _died_… and Vlad's portal was Danny's one hope at the moment.

Danny didn't bother to land; he stood in the air and stared down at what used to be the richest, best section of Amity Park. It obviously wasn't anymore. The large mansions and gardens had given way to row houses and small homes with tiny yards. Kids were running and playing in the streets, adults taking the day off of work mowing their bits of grass and trimming hedges.

Vlad wouldn't have lived there in a million years. Not even if he were a hundred ten years old.

Running his hand through his hair in defeat, Danny whirled around and flew, hell-bent, back towards the center of Amity Park. No portals. But there was a chance, a _small_ chance but still a chance, that Vlad was still alive somewhere. Maybe he just moved. He couldn't imagine Vlad Masters, billionaire and evil maniac, to be resting peacefully in the dirt somewhere. And wherever Vlad went, a ghost portal went with.

He would have to look Vlad up. And for that, Danny would need access to the internet.

* * *

He glared at the computer screen in the library, frustrated with his endless running around in circles. In the seventy years that had passed, computer technology had become almost unrecognizable. The entire computer was a thin clear plate lying on the desk with a small hologram of a woman hovering above it, repeating the exactly same stupid (and _extremely_ unhelpful) words.

"_Unknown request. Please restate query."_

"Vlad Masters. I want to know about Vlad Masters," he ground out, wishing he had a keyboard or a mouse or _anything_ to input the data other than through voice commands. Where was Google when you needed it?

_"Unknown request. Please restate query."_

A boy stuck his head around the corner, blinking a moment at Danny's unusual blood- and dirt-covered clothes. "Need some help?" he asked hesitantly.

"Yes!" Danny twisted around. "I need to find out about Vlad Masters; he used to be mayor of Amity Park about seventy years ago, and this stupid thing isn't cooperating."

"It's an old model," the boy laughed, a smile appearing on his face, "you have to be nice to it – nice and direct. Computer, search: Vlad Masters."

_"Searching: Vlad Masters."_

Danny let out a short breath. "Thanks."

"No problem, amigo," the boy grinned. "Remember, direct." Then he vanished back around the corner.

"_Search returned over two billion results. Please narrow search by profession, region, or date."_

Licking his lips, Danny leaned forwards. "Vlad Masters, Mayor of Amity Park seventy years ago."

"_Searching_."

What would he do if Vlad were still alive? He had no idea if having ghost powers extended their life spans. Tucker had joked a few times about the fact that ghosts were immortal, making Danny and Vlad half-immortal. Would he have to beg? Would Vlad even remember him after all this time? Resting his head on his hands, he waited.

"_Search complete. Confirm: Vladimir Douglas Masters, Mayor of Amity Park 2003 through 2011, born December 9th, 1968_."

"Yes, that's him," Danny whispered as the hologram of the woman disappeared, a picture of Vlad taking her place. Information scrolled through the air – birthdays, major events, places of residence. Then the date of his death: _January 29th, 2073_.

Danny felt like he'd been punched. Vlad was gone, along with his access to the ghost world. Dimly he read through the rest of the information, reading about Vlad's 'spotless' career as a businessman and politician. Apparently the fruit loop had managed to take the secret of his evil, second career with him to the grave. "That's so unfair," Danny muttered.

"_Unknown search parameters. Please restate query_."

Danny was silent for a long few moments, staring at the smiling picture of his dead arch-enemy. "Search: ghost zone portals," he finally said.

"_Searching: ghost zone portals_."

There _had_ to be a way to get to the ghost zone and to Clockwork. It couldn't be that every hole would be plugged up – there were natural portals being created all the time. And, with more than seventy years since his parents had created the first ghost portal, that kind of technology had to be in use out there _somewhere_. His parents had always talked about how pivotal their breakthroughs were; it wasn't possible that all their experiments led to _nothing_.

"_Search complete_."

Vlad vanished and, just for a moment, Danny wanted the image back. At least Vlad was something he recognized. But the information about the ghost zone swirled into existence and Danny leaned forwards, pushing the strange desire to see more of Vlad out of his mind for the moment.

He read through the parts about his parents' greatest invention, and how the Guys in White finally managed to recreate the technology nearly twenty years after Danny's accident. There was a section on natural ghost portals, then a large glop of information about the 'great ghost invasion of the early twenty-first century'. Danny skimmed through most of it, having witnessed it first-hand, laughing a little at how much of the article was about _him_. Phantom, it read, mysteriously vanished one day and most people believe that he had finally found peace and had 'moved on' to the next world.

"So not," he whispered. Then he got to the part about the _end_ of the ghost invasion. Nearly twenty-five years after the creation of the first working ghost portal, the anti-ghost coalition succeeded in collapsing the ghost zone, eradicating the ghost threat and putting an end to ghost portals all together.

Danny read that sentence over and over. "What?" he finally managed to spit out. "That can't be. If the ghost zone was destroyed, the human world would have been too!"

"_Answer located_," the tiny hologram fizzled into life next to the information about the portals, her mouth moving as she answered Danny's not-quite-asked question. "_Theoretically the ghost zone still exists. It was merely transformed back into its basic elements – much like doing a data wipe of a server. The computer still exists, but the data does not. In essence, the ghost zone has been 'reformatted', deleting the ghosts but preserving the place itself_."

"So all the ghosts are gone?" Danny breathed.

"_Affirmative. New search query_?"

"Even Clockwork?"

"_Unknown search parameters. Please restate query_."

Not bothering to log off or even look around, Danny transformed back into Phantom and vanished up into the sky.


	3. Chapter 3

Danny dropped heavily onto the bench at the cemetery, staring up the hill towards his family's graves. Really there was no point to coming back here, but he didn't have any other ideas on what to do or where to go. Tucking his legs up to his chest, he sat and watched the sun start to set on his first full day in the year 2078.

He sighed. This wasn't something that you could plan for… suddenly being thrust into a different life. There wasn't a handbook on what to do if you're lost in a different time period. He couldn't go to the police – they'd throw him in the loony bin. And if on some chance his fingerprints were in the system and they came back saying he was Danny Fenton from seventy years previously, they'd call in the government and he'd get thrown in a government lab. If there _were_ still government labs, anyways.

He couldn't turn to his family either. His parents were dead and his sister was lost in the mists of time. No doubt married and moved far away from this crazy city, it would take a lot of work to track her down. His friends had probably scattered to the wind; there were no Foleys or Mansons left in the phone book. Even the ghosts were gone. He was all alone.

A runaway who couldn't ever go home again.

He needed to take this world one step at a time: find a spot to spend the night tonight. Sleeping on the ground by his parents' headstones again was a depressingly morbid and painful thought. His body was still aching from last night. Maybe he could find an empty room in a hotel and sneak in – an actual bed sounded really nice. Making that his plan, he stretched his arms over his head and listened to his back pop, letting out a breath and trying to relax. It would be a couple of hours before he could find a hotel. He might as well find something to do.

Movement caught his eye before he could really think much about it and he looked up, surprised to see the old woman from this morning, sans granddaughter, walking down the path. Why was she still at the cemetery? She was walking slowly, not seeming to be paying attention to what was going on around her.

When she came up equal with the bench Danny was sitting on, she hesitated, looking over at him. Her eyes roved over his dirty clothes and his deadpan expression before speaking. "What are you still doing here?"

Danny shrugged, answering truthfully, "I don't know where else to be."

"Did you get something to eat?"

Nodding, Danny watched her for a moment. "Thanks for that, I was hungry."

She smiled. "You're welcome. Can I sit?" she asked with a gesture towards the bench. Danny scooted to the side a bit and the old woman sat down heavily next to him. "Waiting for my daughter, Sarah, to come and pick me up. It's a family remembrance day," she said, "I come here every July 19th to remember everyone I've lost. It's quite a list by this point." Her grin faded for a moment.

"My family is buried here too," Danny whispered into the silence when he realized she wasn't going to say anymore, looking away into the sunset to hide his watering eyes. "Kind of stuck as to what to do about it."

"Time will pass," she answered softly. "Life goes on."

Danny snorted – he already knew that. Life _definitely_ went on. Get locked in a Thermos for seventy years as the whole world moves on without you and then talk to him about it.

"You've got a place to stay tonight?"

He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye, wondering why she bothered to ask. Then he nodded. "Yeah." Not a complete lie; he did have a plan for the night. "Why do you care?" he asked after a moment.

"Have you looked in a mirror lately?" The old woman chuckled. "You look like you've been through a blender. I used to have a little brother that came home regularly looking just like you – it got my protective side going. Besides, I'm old; it's my job to be worried about all the crazy kids of the world."

The grin that flickered on Danny's face was one of his first real smiles in a long while. "My grandmother used to say that," he said softly.

"Mine too," the old woman agreed with a smile, "I probably picked it up from her."

They sat in silence for a long few minutes, watching the sun set and the cars roll past on the road below them. One of the cars, a dingy blue vehicle, pulled to a stop by the side of the road. "That's my ride," the lady said as the back door opened and three kids piled out. One was the girl from that morning – the one that had been holding the flowers – the other two were boys.

Boys that, Danny realized with a start, he recognized. They were the two that had opened the Thermos the day before, setting him free.

"Gramma!" the little girl yelped as she tore up the hill, her brothers a step behind. "Mama made s'getti for supper! I gotta help!"

Danny smiled faintly, watching the family and wishing that he could go home too. Looking away, he shook his head softly and sighed. There was a dream he should put out of his head for now – he wasn't going home. He was going to a hotel. And then… He bit his lip uncomfortably. There was no 'and then' to his plan.

"Gramma Jazz," one of the boys panted, "look at what we found."

_Gramma Jazz_? Danny wondered, glancing back. The boy who had spoken was holding out the rusted, dirty Thermos Danny had spent the past seventy years inside of. _Could it be?_

The other boy glanced at Danny, his blue eyes glittering in the deepening shadows, before turning to his grandmother and speaking. "You told us to dig around in the backyard, remember? We actually found something!"

The old woman, Gramma Jazz, picked the Thermos out of the boy's hand and examined it. "It's a thermos," she said with surprise, and a bit of sadness coloring her voice. "A Fenton Thermos, they were called. They used to catch ghosts."

"There was one inside," the first boy bubbled. "We opened it and there was a bright flash of light and a real _ghost_ appeared!"

"A ghost?" Gramma Jazz asked sharply, her knuckles whitening as her fingers tightened around the Thermos. "What did it look like?"

Danny nodded to himself, noting her reaction with a small eye roll. _He_ was the ghost inside the Thermos, not some crazed lunatic bent on world destruction. There wasn't much to fear. But the thought went out of his mind after only a second, his attention turning back on the old woman. _Gramma Jazz_… And she knew about Fenton Thermoses which, to his knowledge, wasn't something everyone knew. Could it be?

"The one you told us so much about," the second boy added. "White hair, green eyes, black clothes… he looked really scared when he saw us."

The first boy nodded, jumping in. "I think he was more scared of us than we were of him. He ran away so fast!"

Gramma Jazz had a hand pressed to her heart, her face pale, her eyes wide. "Are you sure?" she breathed.

"Are you okay, Gramma?" the girl asked nervously. "You don't look good." The two brothers had also rearranged their expressions into worried ones, the taller boy glancing back over his shoulder towards the car.

"I'm fine," the old lady answered slowly. "It's just that the ghost you saw… that was my brother."

Danny barely took in the expressions of disbelief on the three kids' faces. He was staring at the old woman who he knew was his sister. Jazz. She was still alive. She was still in Amity Park, of all places, even after all the promises to move to Iceland or some other far-off place. "Jazz…" he whispered.

Her head snapped around at his soft voice, her sharp eyes focusing on him instantly, understanding flooding into her expression as she, finally, recognized his voice. "Danny!"

* * *

Before Danny really knew what was going on, he'd been bundled into the blue car next to his sister, and was explaining to the woman driving the car who she'd picked up. The woman, who Danny picked up was Jazz's daughter Sarah, eyed him in the rear-view mirror and only seemed to be half listening to her mother's babbling. Danny didn't return her gaze, instead choosing to stare aimlessly out the window.

He'd found his sister, but something was wrong. He hadn't thought about the fact that she would have a family all of her own. Kids. And _grandkids_. The thought could barely process through his head – it was just too odd.

"Where did the blood come from?" Jazz asked a second time, having to poke Danny in the side to get him to listen.

Danny glanced down at his clothes, then up at his sister, still having a tough time reconciling the eighteen-year-old he remembered with this wrinkled old woman. The voice was the same, though, and the irritating twinkle in her eyes. "Dash," he said, "decided to chase me all over town. Cornered me behind the Nasty Burger."

With a nod, Jazz reached forwards to touch Danny's bruised eye. Danny ducked out the way, bumping in to one of the boys. "The Nasty Burger is gone," Jazz informed him, "it exploded about thirty years ago and killed a bunch of people." She studied him for a moment. "And Dash Baxter was mayor for awhile."

"Mayor?" Danny's head felt like it was going to explode with that thought. "_Dash_?"

"He did a good job, too," Jazz said. "Everyone wanted him to keep going, but he got out of it and, last I heard, he retired to some place in Florida." She fell silent and Danny went back to staring out the window. He felt very uncomfortable around these people that were supposedly his relatives. "Are you okay, Danny?" Jazz asked softly.

"I was locked in a Thermos for seventy years," Danny whispered. "My parents are dead, the ghost zone has been wiped out, and my sister has _grandkids_. Under the circumstances, I think I'm handling it pretty well."

"Are you really Gramma Jazz's brother?" one of the boys asked skeptically. "You're not much older than me."

Danny glanced at him. "I'm eighty-six."

The boy blinked, sitting back in his chair. "I'm twelve," he said softly.

"You're not eighty-six," Jazz said, "you're sixteen. You look just like you did the day you disappeared."

When Jazz brought up what had happened that horrible day seventy years ago, questions about what had (and hadn't) happened flooded into Danny's mind. He shifted on the chair, refusing to look at anyone, tired and hungry and more confused than ever. It all seemed massively unfair. Vlad had never gotten caught, Dash had become _mayor_ and was now lounging around in Florida, and Danny, who had spent two years of his life protecting people and had lost so much already, had _nothing_. He didn't have much of a family, or friends, or any hope of his world righting itself again.

Danny fought back the question that was on the tip of his tongue, knowing it would come out sounding harsh, but it slipped out anyways. "Why didn't you free me?"

"I tried, I looked all over for the Thermos after our parents started bragging about catching you-" Jazz started, but Danny interrupted her.

"Why didn't you tell Mom and Dad who I was?" Danny's world was growing blurry, and he had to blink to clear the tears from his eyes. His fingers clenched into fists in his lap and his eyes burned as he stared, fixedly, at the floor of the car. "Why did I spend _seventy years locked in a freaking Thermos_?!"

Jazz didn't answer at first. Then, softly, she said, "I told them, Danny."

Those four words broke Danny's world into pieces. Tears leaking out of his eyes, Danny reached for his ghost form. Ignoring the startled gasps of the kids in the car, the surprised shriek of the driver, and his sister's calls to wait, he phased through the roof and into the sky.

She told them. And still he spent seventy years in a Thermos. Why hadn't they freed him? _Why_? Didn't they love him?

* * *

Danny settled onto a branch in the big pine tree, but held solidly to his ghost form. Phantom always felt a little less than Fenton did, and the sting of his parents' betrayal hurt a little less. The sun had long set and the moon had risen, staining the world around him in soothing tones of blue, grey, and black. Staring blankly at a city he couldn't understand, Danny tried not to think.

Not thinking wasn't as hard as he thought it might be. His brain was already on overload from everything he'd learned that day and he was exhausted. It was easy to just sit and stare, rocking slowly back and forth in the gentle breeze.

The sad truth of his world was that there was no escape from the onslaught of everything that was wrong. He couldn't go home and bury his head under a pillow. He couldn't run to his parents. He couldn't turn to his friends. He couldn't hide from the truth that he was in a world he didn't understand. What he wanted to do more than anything was to go home.

But he didn't have a home to go to.

Danny watched the stars twinkle overhead and traced the moon's slow path through the skies as the hours filtered blankly past him. He barely moved, waiting for everything to start making sense once again. No real thoughts entered his mind. He just sat and stared and waited.

It was nearly dawn before Danny moved. Shifting tiredly off of his perch, he stepped into the air and took a moment to stretch the kinks out of his muscles, then took off towards town. His mind was still mostly disconnected from his body, his emotions and his consciousness taking two giant steps away from each other.

First, something to wear that wasn't going to attract attention, his brain directed. Don't worry about what comes next or what will happen, just do the one thing. Get something to wear that blends in and isn't covered in your own blood.

He phased through the roof of the first department store he could find, blindly picking up a cheap t-shirt and jeans from one of the racks. He stared down at them for the longest time, standing invisibly in the store, fighting himself over taking them. It was stealing, but he couldn't find it in his heart to care. After everything that had happened to him, what was a pair of jeans and a shirt?

Sighing, he took to the air, his mind already directing him to his next task – a shower. A motel just down the street from the department store had a parking lot full of empty spaces. He stepped through the wall, glancing around the room he'd found himself in. Twin beds, ugly décor, unoccupied. Losing his ghost form in a flicker of light, he slipped into the bathroom and into the shower.

When he was clean, his stolen clothes on his body and his own clothes balled up to be thrown in a dumpster, Danny flashed back to his ghost form and once again into the air. Food was next: get something to eat. He'd only eaten one meal in the past seventy years or so. With only seven dollars and change in his pockets, he wasn't sure what kind of food he would be able to get.

Finding a nearby fast food place took just minutes. After tossing his bloody, dirty clothes in the dumpster behind the restaurant, Danny wandered in and spent all his remaining money on a small breakfast. Chewing it blankly, he stared through the window and watched the people walk past on their way through their morning routines.

Everything he did that morning was slow and emotionless. After breakfast, he walked around town, went through the mall, and finally ended up in the park by lunch. He didn't remember much of his morning, which kind of suited him because he wasn't much in a mood for remembering things. He sat on a bench at the park, watching a small fountain bubble. People moved around him like ocean waves, sweeping their way to lunch, then retreating back to their offices and leaving Danny alone.

Danny didn't really notice when he was alone in the park and he didn't quite care when the sun started to beat down on him and burn his skin. He just sat and stared. For hours, he was motionless on the bench.

When his brain informed him that he was hungry, Danny pushed himself to his feet and started to walk towards the cluster of food stores he'd noticed that morning. Turning invisible before he reached one of the largest grocery stores, Danny walked through the doors, grabbed a sandwich and a can of pop out of the deli, and left again. With no money, he was reduced to taking what he needed and, in his blank state, he didn't much care. He probably would later, but that was just a small thought that died as quickly as it appeared.

Back at the park he parked himself under a shady tree and snacked on his appropriated sandwich. People were filing back into the park – it must have been getting later in the day. The sun was starting to head towards the horizon once more. When his food was done, he tossed it into a nearby garbage can and settled down in his shady spot to wait until nightfall.

He felt a little proud of himself, actually. He'd gone the entire day without thinking about his family, his friends, or what was going on around him. He just existed in the moment, with no past and no future. It worked. He felt nothing, he needed nobody, and his world was what he made of it.

His blank blue eyes stared around the park, watching the movements of the people, until the sun had set and the moon had once again risen high into the sky. Making his way back to the deserted hotel on the outskirts of Amity Park, Danny located an empty room, dropped onto a bed, and fell into a dreamless sleep.

* * *

His second day didn't go nearly as well as the first. For starters, he woke up screaming, tears streaming out of his eyes, panic clutching at his heart. He'd barely gotten his screaming under control when the crushing blow of the emotions he'd held back all the previous day slammed into him like a ton of bricks. They would no longer be ignored.

"Why didn't they let me go?" he cried, filled with the torment of his parents abandoning him. They had locked him away in a thermos and then buried him in the back yard. "Why?" He tired to work up a good head of anger towards them, but his emotions failed him. There was no anger to be found in him, just an ocean of sorrow and pain.

Curled up in the hotel bed, lost in a time he didn't belong in, Danny buried his head under his blanket and allowed himself to cry. There was no one to come to his rescue. He was alone and he had to deal with everything by himself. At the moment, burying his face in the scratchy pillow and pulling the blankest over his head sounded like the best plan.

Finally, worn out by his tears, he fell back asleep.


	4. Chapter 4

He took a shower around lunch, not bothering to make the bed before phasing through the windows in search of something to eat. His eyes were a little brighter than yesterday, his movements not as robotic and blank. After getting a meal from one of the large supermarkets, Danny walked down one street after another, his mind back on planning.

Going back to his own time sounded impossible at this point. Not only could he not get to the ghost zone, it sounded like Clockwork wouldn't be there anyways. And getting trapped in a giant world of nothingness didn't come across as something he wanted to do. So for the moment, the plan to try to turn back the clock seventy years had to be shelved.

The only other option was to stay here. He would have to start his life all over again – destroy his old one and remake himself as a new person. Danny Fenton was dead and it would raise too many problems if the world found a sixteen-year-old that should have died seventy years previously. There was no way he could just reinsert himself into the life he'd lost.

He could go talk to Jazz, see what she recommended he do. Maybe she knew what had happened to Sam and Tucker. He wanted to ask her a bunch of questions about how everything had turned out seventy years ago; he needed to understand exactly why things had happened they way they had. And then he would get out of her life.

Danny wasn't going to give up hope on getting back to his own time, but there was no way he could be Danny Fenton here. As he walked through the streets, he tried to come up with a list of things he would need to do. No ties to his past – except he'd probably write his sister and visit every now and then. He'd need to go through the department of records and take out everything that tied him to Danny Fenton: fingerprints, photographs, dental records, things like that. He'd have to find some kind of job and make money, stealing things was eating away at his conscience now that he was willing to listen to it. And he'd need to find a place to sleep – the hotel wouldn't cut it for long.

Before long, he found himself in front of his parents' old house, staring up at it. There was movement in the upper windows, someone was home. He walked slowly up the walk, catching sight of the name plaque by the doorbell. _Silby_. He hesitated for a moment, then reached up and touched his finger against the doorbell.

The door was wrenched open before the ringing even faded away, the taller of the two boys staring at him. "It's you," he said, then turned back towards the house and screamed, "_GRAMMA JAZZ! DOOR'S FOR YOU!"_ Then he vanished back into the confines of the house.

Danny took a small step forwards, catching the door before it could swing shut on him. He peered into the living room from his vantage point at the door, watching as the kid went to join his brother on the couch, eyes fixed on the movie. The inside of his parents' house was amazingly similar to the way it had been seventy years previously. The television was in the same spot, the couch looked eerily like the one his parents' had destroyed when he was fourteen, and even the wall color looked creepily familiar.

"Danny."

Glancing up the stairs, Danny spotted his sister making her way carefully down the steps. She was staring at him with a smile, surprise and gratitude on her face. "Jazz."

"You came back," she whispered, stepping off the bottom step and throwing her arms around him. "I didn't think you'd come back."

Danny hugged her back, holding her close. "I need to know," he said softly. "I need to know what happened."

"Come into the kitchen, I'll get you something to eat." Jazz disentangled herself from Danny and walked towards the kitchen, Danny trailing behind.

Where the living room could have been his parents', the kitchen was nothing like the one he knew. There were no strange inventions, no glowing tubes on the counters, and no scratched up appliances. The kitchen was a chef's dream, full of stone and stainless steel. "Sit," Jazz directed, pointing one of her wrinkled fingers at the stool by the new island.

Danny sat, watching her bustle around and then drop a plate in front of him. He smiled a thanks, took a bite of the sandwich, then waited.

"Mom and Dad came home bragging about catching you," Jazz finally said, boosting herself carefully onto the other stool and helping herself to the bowl of potato chips she'd set out. "I was worried - I knew you were in one of the Thermoses. I spent all night searching through the lab and the entire house, opening up every Thermos I could find. When I couldn't find you, I called Sam and Tucker."

"They came to help?" Danny asked.

Jazz nodded. "We looked all over, even talking to Mom and Dad about where they had put you, since you were such a trophy catch. None of us could get an answer out of them."

Danny looked down at his plate, running a finger around the smooth edge. "When did you tell them who I was?"

"On the third day, we started to get worried that you were getting any food or water. We thought you might die in there with nothing to eat. Besides, Mom and Dad were getting worried about where you'd run off to. So we told them. They didn't believe us at first. It took all the evidence we had and a lot of convincing." She smiled sadly. "They refused to believe that they'd been hunting their son, or that a half-ghost could exist."

"So they didn't let me out?"

"No, we got to them in the end. It took about four hours to convince them, but once we proved it they never questioned it. I could tell when we finally got through, because Mom was off the couch in an instant, racing for the basement."

Danny ran his finger around the edge of his plate one last time. "And…"

"And they opened the Thermos that you were supposed to be in. Obviously, you weren't." Jazz was silent for a long time. "Mom and Dad tore the house apart over the next few days. None of us got any sleep until we dropped where we were standing. You weren't… anywhere." She shrugged, picking up another potato chip and studying it. "We didn't know if you were still in a Fenton Thermos, or if you'd been taken, or where you were. The only thing we knew is that you weren't in the house."

Staring out the window, Danny bit his lip. His parents _did_ care about him; they hadn't left him in the Thermos on purpose. Now this morning's screaming felt a little childish.

"We couldn't find you, Danny. Mom and Dad were never the same. They gave up ghost technology all together, selling the ghost portal to the Guys in White." Jazz looked at her brother. "And when they finally succeeded in wiping the ghost zone, they were frantic. I know both of them thought you might have vanished into there. I don't think they ever gave up hope, though, even after the ghost zone was nothing but a blank slate. Mom kept a box of your stuff in the attic the rest of her life and refused to get rid of it. How the Thermos got buried in the back yard I have no idea."

Danny nodded. "What happened to Sam and Tucker?" he whispered.

"Tucker moved to California and became some hot shot computer programmer for a video game company. Got married when he was twenty-five and had a kid before he died." Jazz touched Danny's arm sympathetically. "Car accident when he was twenty-nine. It took all of us by surprise."

"And Sam?" Danny asked into the silence.

"Got married eventually, then divorced, and never had any children. She adopted a little boy when she was about forty – he was this cute boy with scruffy black hair and sapphire blue eyes." Jazz smiled at him. "His name was Danny, and Sam absolutely fell in love with him. She thought every now and then that he was you, reincarnated or something. She's living a few miles outside of town now and keeps to herself quite a bit. I don't think she ever got over you vanishing."

Brother and sister, sixteen and eighty-eight, sat next to each other in silence for a long few minutes, finishing off the sandwich and potato chips. It was, if Danny closed his eyes, almost like no time had passed. But it had, and each time he had to open his eyes he was forced to remember it.

"What was it like?"

"What was what like?" Danny asked, popping another chip into his mouth.

"Seventy years inside a Fenton Thermos."

Danny thought about it for a moment. "Nothing, really. You can't see, you can't hear or feel or smell or taste or… anything. It's just blankness." He shrugged. "Until I ended up here, I had no idea how much time had passed. It could have been hours or months." His voice dropped to a whisper. "I never would have dreamed that seventy years had passed."

Jazz glanced in his direction. "What would have happened if Taylor and Mike hadn't found you?"

Danny shrugged. "Probably would have stayed in there until the Thermos opened somehow. Someone finding it, or time wearing a crack in it, or something." It was an uncomfortable thought. If those two boys hadn't dug in the exact right place, he could have been locked, unaware, in that Thermos for _centuries._

They fell back into a comfortable silence, neither of them wanting to dwell on the thought of Danny being stuck in a Thermos for all that time. Jazz broke the silence first. "I'm… sorry, Danny."

"What for?" Danny asked.

"For not rescuing you. If I would have told them sooner…" she whispered.

"Jazz."

"I knew how forgetful the two of them were. I should have _known _that they would lose the Thermos. I should have told them right away."

"Jazz," Danny said sharply, turning to face her for the first time. "It's not your fault. You don't have to be sorry."

Jazz smiled sadly at her brother. "Thanks, Danny, but it's been my fault for seventy years, and it'll probably stay the same for the rest of my life."

Danny rolled his eyes, getting off his stool and grabbing the two glasses to refill them. "You did rescue me, you know. Your grandchildren did, anyways. And you saved me at the cemetery – I'm not sure what I would have done if you wouldn't have sat down next to me." He set her glass of water in front of her and put a smile on his face. It felt a little forced, but it was the best he could do. "Of course, telling me to _scram_ was a little mean. I mean, they're my family too."

He grinned a little wider when his sister's smile grew. "You looked like a zombie that had just dug its way out of its grave, you know," she muttered back, a little twinkle in her eye.

"Ah, but I'm the nice kind of undead," Danny quipped back.

Jazz laughed, then she shook her head, still chuckling. "I missed you, Danny."

Danny drained his glass and then put it in the sink to be washed. "So…" he hesitated, "what do you think I should do now? I mean, I can't…" he trailed off, unsure of what he was trying to say.

"You call Sam." Jazz nodded, getting off of her stool and grabbing the handset hanging on the wall. "She's got empty rooms galore in that house of hers, much more than this cramped place. You can stay with her for a bit until we figure out what to do."

"Sam?" Danny whispered his mouth strangely dry. This wasn't the sixteen-year-old Sam he was half in love with… this was eighty-six-year-old Sam. Calling her seemed a little weird. What would he say?

"Her last name's Madel now, she never changed it back after she got divorced." Jazz held out the phone until Danny took it, staring down at the bank piece of plastic. There were no numbers, there was no speaker, and there wasn't anything to dial _with_. After a moment, Jazz sighed. "I'm sorry, Danny, I forgot. Phone, Dial: Samantha Madel."

"_Dialing: Samantha Madel," _the phone answered in a pleasant voice.

Danny jumped, nearly dropping the phone when Sam's grandmother suddenly appeared in miniature, hovering over his hand. "What? Who is this?"

"Uh… I'm looking for Samantha Madel," he stuttered, wondering to himself how in the _world_ Edna Manson was still alive after all these years.

"Speaking," the old woman answered and Danny _did_ drop the phone. It clattered to the ground and the hologram of Sam – really _really_ old Sam – put her hands on her hips and glared. "Who the Hell _is this?_ Jazz? This is your number… what kind of game…"

"Sam…" Danny breathed. He bent down and scooped up the small receiver, studying the hologram of his best friend. "You look… like your grandmother."

Sam's eyes narrowed. "How would you know, you're, what, seventeen?"

"Sixteen," Danny shot back, "Going on eighty-seven."

"Yeah, right," Sam muttered sarcastically, sounding incredibly like her sixteen-year-old self. "How in the world is that possible?"

"It is when you've been locked in a Fenton Thermos for seventy years," Danny muttered darkly.

Sam's eyes locked on his and Danny felt a strange moment of vertigo, then he heard a soft, "Danny?" just before the hologram of his best friend vanished.

Danny blinked in surprise, turning the handset over in his hand, wondering if he'd done something wrong.

"It's okay," Jazz said with a smile, "she dropped her phone."

When the image of Sam reappeared, she looked shaken and pale. "Danny? Danny Fenton?"

"Can… can I come over and talk?" he stammered, a little worried about how fragile Sam looked right then. She _sounded_ like the teenage-can-do-anything-wears-army-boots version he remembered, but she _looked_ like she would break in half if the wind blew too hard.

Sam nodded faintly, her mouth opening and shutting wordlessly.

Danny felt a hand touch his shoulder and Jazz put in her two cents. "I'll give him a map. I'm living with Sarah now, and there's not enough room here. Can he bunk in one of your spare rooms until we get everything figured out?"

"He'd better," Sam said darkly. "After seventy years, if he _doesn't_ stay for a few days I'll track him down and kill him and there _will_ be a body at his funeral."

Then the hologram faded and the phone gave a quiet chirp. Jazz chuckled, taking the phone back out of his hand and replacing it.

"I had a funeral?" Danny whispered. "_Without_ a body in the casket?"

"We had to do something after you couldn't be found," Jazz said softly. "It was years after you vanished, though, just before Sam and Tucker moved away for college. It was a kind of closure for them, knowing you wouldn't be back anytime soon. It let them move without feeling guilty about it, wondering if you'd come back and they wouldn't be there anymore."

Danny nodded quietly for a moment. Then he arched an eyebrow, glancing at his aged sister. "Map?"

* * *

The map itself was definitely the neatest invention Danny had seen so far, although he was a little too depressed to really care much about the phone – he was working primarily on autopilot. Jazz gave him this small device that hooked over his ear like the headsets of cell phones he remembered. Yes, you could make phone calls from it, but it wasn't just a cell phone. This thing was like an iPhone on steroids. It projected a small holographic display in front of his eyes that overlaid perfectly with the world around him. Floating several hundred feet above Amity Park, he could fix his eyes on any given landmark and information about the place would pop up before him, seeming to float in midair.

Sam's house on the map was marked with a red 'X' some distance away. The computer displayed a nice line that showed which streets he should follow and it gave an indignant chirp when Danny ignored it, flying straight towards the 'X'. After a minute or so the computer seemed to catch on, erasing its previous line and creating a new, perfectly straight one that led from Danny's current position to his destination.

Danny was anything but confident about the upcoming meeting he had with the friend he'd just seen a few days… or seventy years, depending on your perspective… earlier. The Sam he'd seen during the phone call had seemed _very_ old and frail. Doing a little bit of math in his head, he figured that _this_ Sam was even older than Sam's grandmother had been. She was so different from what he remembered.

And everything else he'd heard…

His parents had been crushed by his disappearance. Tucker was dead. Danny'd had a funeral already. Sam and Jazz were so _old_. Everyone had moved on… but him.

He was stuck – a kid from 2008, stuck in the world of 2078.

His flight slowed as he chewed his lip, trying to figure out what to say to his once-upon-a-time-almost-wish-she-could-have-been-a-girlfriend friend. What do you say to someone after seventy years? Does 'Hi!' cut it? To make it all worse, he was having this squirming feeling in his stomach that made him want to apologize to her for being gone for seventy years even though there hadn't been anything he could do about it. It was probably due to all the bruises he'd gotten before he'd learned Sam logic: apologize even if you don't think it's your fault and just get over it because she's going to win anyways.

With a startled blink, he suddenly realized he'd come to a total halt in the air, so wrapped up in trying to figure out what to say that he'd forgotten to keep flying. He shook his head and pushed himself forwards once again, trying not to think about what he was about to do.

It worked for about a half-second. "Ah…" he growled into the sky as thoughts slipped through his head. He was _stuck_ seventy years in the future. His eyes glowed brightly, even in the brilliant sunshine of the morning, frustrated and annoyed and depressed and furious and terrified. Very little was like what he remembered and he had no idea what to expect.

His entire _life_ was gone. Not just his family, not just his friends… everything… and it was a very scary thought. The only thing he had left to hang on to was the image on an old and fail woman that was, supposedly, his best friend.

"So… Hi?" he tried out to himself, then shook his head at how stupid that sounded. "Hey," didn't work either. He narrowed his eyes as he flew, watching the line that extended towards Sam's house get shorter and shorter. There, just beyond those trees.

"Hey, Sam. I'm sorry for leaving you for seventy years. Think you can spare a room?"

_Nothing_ sounded right. There just wasn't anything to _say_ to someone after seventy years. "Remember me? I had a crush on you… like… three days ago… when you were my age…"

The house came into view. It was a huge thing with gothic spires and tall, pointed windows. Painted a muted purple, the neatly cut lawn was shaded with large trees and thick beds of beautiful flowers. It was a gorgeous home with just a hint of creepy to it.

Danny smiled. He could have picked out Sam's house without the computer-phone. He reached up to flick off the map, listening to it chirp, then started to descend through the air. Checking around, he flipped back to his human form when he was still a few feet from the ground and dropped soundlessly onto the sideway.

"Hi, Sam. It's me, Danny. I know you thought I died seventy years ago, but I didn't. I need your help."

Taking the steps up to the front door two at a time, Danny reached over and touched the doorbell, shuffling nervously on his feet. He studied the carefully penciled last name on the front door – Madel – and tried to image Sam being married to someone. The guy had to have been something special to have married Sam.

The door suddenly few open and Danny looked up, staring straight into his best friend's violet eyes. Her hand was over her heart, her eyes wide, her grey hair pulled back into the exact same pony tail she'd worn when she was sixteen. "Danny," she whispered as the smile on her face grew.

His mouth was dry. He couldn't think. All of the carefully prepared lines flew out of his head like a tornado had struck his brain. So Danny said the first thing that came to his mind – no doubt a product of two years of bad witty banter training. "What, seventy years and no flying cars?"

* * *

Deep in the forests of Colorado, a man flinched when a strange alarm started to blare. When none of his computers reacted to the alarm, he pushed his hand through his short white hair and glanced around, struggling to remember what the sound went with. It belonged to one of the older things, that much he could figure out, but his memory was failing him as to what _exactly_ he was looking for.

Moving boxes around in his retrofitted laboratory, the alarm continued to shriek. "Shut up," the man snapped. "I know already."

The alarm ignored him. His newest computer program, however, did not. A hologram appeared beside him, the smile on the woman's face a perfect simulacrum of the human it was modeled after. "Having trouble, Honey?" she soothed.

"Where's the blasted alarm coming from?" he asked sourly.

The hologram pointed helpfully towards one of the far corners of the lab. "I think it's one of your oldest experiments – the one that detects half-ghosts." It blinked a few times with an unfocused look on its face, then grinned. "Data suggests that the alarm means a half-ghost has been detected in Amity Park."

Stalking across the room, the man located the ancient-looking panel and finally silenced the noise. "Unlikely," the man sneered. "It's probably just malfunctioned, just like all the other sensors have. This equipment is ancient." He glared down at the computer with an odd look in his eye. "There are no more half-ghosts. Daniel died seventy years ago and Danielle vanished without a trace not long after." He clenched his hands. "Even _Vlad_ is gone."

"So that's it?" the hologram asked softly, a strange not-quite-real emotion flickering in her eyes. "You're just going to give up? You've been looking for someone else like you for decades."

"I'm done," he whispered. "No more crazy goose chases around the country."

The hologram tried to pat its master on the shoulder, a digital flare of frustration thrumming through its circuits when its hand went right through his shoulder. "I think," it said slowly, "that you're giving up too easily, Matthew."

Blue eyes turned to look at the hologram. The face that held the eyes was old and wrinkled – showing maybe sixty years of wear and tear – but the eyes and the mind behind it were much older. "_Matthew_ doesn't leave his home in Colorado," the man said sadly. "_Matthew_ is done with all of this."

"Then maybe," the hologram said, "it's time to resurrect the dead." It clapped its hands, sending the appropriate hand-clapping sound out of the speakers, and set its most purposeful smile on its face. "I want to go on one last trip before you lock yourself away." The hologram shimmered a little, replacing its 'lounging' outfit with its 'travelling' outfit. The blue jumpsuit fit perfectly, modern black accents at the waist, hands, and feet, and a pair of sunglasses perched on its head. "Please, Honey?" it begged.

The man rubbed his wrinkled hands over his face and groaned, already knowing that he'd give in. Even though the hologram was just a copy of someone he'd fallen in love with over a century earlier, he'd give her anything.

"To Amity Park," he whispered.


	5. Chapter 5

Danny sat in the old kitchen, gazing around at all of the _things_ Sam had collected throughout her life. The whole place had a slightly creepy vibe to it – it wasn't the average kitchen that had 'spiders' as the main decorating theme. Sam, though, fit into it perfectly.

He glanced down at the cup he was fiddling with. It was chipped and worn from use, a lot like his best friend now was. She was eighty-six years old and, despite the fact that their voices were the same and they made the same gestures and were (really) the same people, his Sam and this Sam didn't quite mesh in his mind. If he didn't look at her, he could almost image his almost-girlfriend sitting across the table from him.

"So what are your plans?" Sam asked softly.

Danny shrugged, still fixated on the cup in his hands. "Erase Danny Fenton, start over," he said after a moment. "Pick a new name, maybe. Move someplace."

"That's it?" Sam shook her head a little, sitting back in her chair. "Just… start over? No fighting it? No trying to go back and change the past?"

"The Ghost Zone's gone," Danny said sourly. "Clockwork's gone. Vlad's gone. My parents are gone. Tucker's gone. The portals are gone. Unless you have a time machine in your basement, _I'm stuck here_. There isn't anything else to do." He set his cup down on the table. "I don't think there's a fix to this."

Sam took a deep breath, then hesitated, unsure of what she was going to say.

"What?" Danny asked, looking up.

"That's not… technically all true," Sam said slowly. She looked into Danny's eyes, a pensive smile on her face. "Vlad's not dead."

Danny blinked at her, startled. "But… I read…"

"Vlad Masters had a funeral five years ago after, according to the news, dying from a massive heart attack. Coincidently enough, Vlad's 'long lost son' appeared a few days later to claim Vlad's fortune and retire in a billionaire's lifestyle." Sam leaned forwards on the table to tap the center of the table. "Computer, display picture of Matthew Masters please."

"_Yes ma'am,"_ the computer stated just before a small hologram of a man, about sixty years old, fizzled into existence just above the tabletop.

"If that's not Vlad," Sam finished with an arched eyebrow, "I'll wear bright pink every day for the rest of my life."

Danny's forehead wrinkled as he studied the picture. "That can't be Vlad. Vlad's more than a hundred by now, isn't he? This Matthew person isn't _that _old."

"I can't explain how it works," Sam said, "but it's Vlad, somehow. It fits all the facts that I've found of him. Matthew won't allow for genetic testing at all, my guess is because it would show that he's a perfect genetic match to Vlad. Most of Vlad's personal information has vanished mysteriously – fingerprints, DNA samples, iris prints, stuff like that." Her eyes narrowed as she studied the man. "It's Vlad, I'm sure of it."

"So maybe Vlad knows a way back to the past?" Danny asked, a glimmer of hope in his heart as he stared at his ancient arch-enemy. It wouldn't be the first time Vlad, as an old hermit, would have helped him return to the past.

"If there's a way, I'm sure Vlad knows it," Sam said darkly. "If nothing else, he always had eleven different ways to back out of any plan. I'm sure it's to be known, he knows it." She grinned, making the wrinkles in her face crease heavily. "And… about the basement."

Danny looked at her, freezing for a split second. "You don't… a time machine?" he asked incredulously.

Sam laughed, her voice sounding more like that of a young woman than the old lady that she really as. "No, no. But I do have the Fenton Portal."

"I thought the Guys in White had the portal," Danny said.

"The Guys in White were dissolved almost fifty years ago. The portal came up on auction a while later and I ended up with it." Sam shrugged, her smile tipping into something a little morose. "The Ghost Zone is nothing but blankness, but we've got a portal that gets you there."

* * *

The ghost portal was nothing but an empty hole. The short tunnel lead to nowhere, the power cord was unplugged, and at least a dozen spiders had taken to calling the thing 'home'. "I had it powered on, at first," Sam said softly, sitting on the basement steps. "I kept hoping you'd step through it one day. Then it just got depressing to look at, so I turned it off. It's been off every since."

Danny walked up to it and touched the cold metal of the machine that changed his life. "Where does it lead, now?"

"To nothing." Sam shrugged. "At least, last time I checked. The Ghost Zone was a completely blank void. No doors, no lairs, no ghosts… Nothing."

"No Clockwork."

Sam gave a sad smile. "No Clockwork."

"And you just kept it, all these years." Danny turned and gave her a quizzical look, raising one of his eyebrows.

"I kept it for my son," Sam said so quietly that Danny barely heard her. Then she blinked, seeming to remember something. "Speaking of, he's coming over to visit. You'll get to meet him."

"Oh." Danny twisted back around to study the ancient Fenton Portal. He wasn't sure how he felt about Sam having once been married… and he _really_ wasn't sure about the idea of her having a son. For a moment, he struggled to remember what Jazz had told him about Sam's son. Adopted, he remembered with a sharp stab of jealousy, named, coincidentally, 'Danny'. "Danny, right?"

Sam didn't answer. When Danny glanced over his shoulder, Sam was gazing at him with her old, violet eyes. "You okay?" she asked, concerned about a note that she'd heard in Danny's voice just then.

"I'm fine." Danny said shortly.

"You were always 'fine'," Sam whispered, "and I highly suspect you always will be. But are you _okay_?" It had been a codeword the two had developed years earlier – 'okay' meant something totally different from 'fine'. After his fight with his alternate-future self, he'd been fine. The persistent nightmares, however, meant that he had been far from _okay_.

Danny started to nod his head. Then, rather to his amazement, his head moved in the other direction. "I'm fine," he said again. "And I'll be okay."

"It's hard to imagine what you're going through." Sam tipped her head to the side, a serious look on her face. "Lost your whole life, have to start a new one. Nobody's who you remember." She gave a sad little smile. "You probably would have just passed me on the street, not knowing who I was. I couldn't image what that would be like. To have everything one day and lose it all the next."

"I'll be okay," Danny said again, firmly. He looked into her eyes, his own gaze hardening. "And who knows, maybe I'll get to go back to my own time."

With a smile, Sam nodded in agreement. "Never know, huh? But if you need to talk, I'm here for you Danny."

"Always have been," Danny agreed.

"Let's go make some supper."

Danny blanched, heading across the basement to help his friend to her feet. "I hope your cooking has improved. To me, those tofu hamburgers were just last week, you know."

Sam chuckled. "I don't remember you throwing up."

"I remember _Tucker_ throwing up," Danny added with a slightly evil laugh. "And I'm not going to be subjected to that again."

"Don't worry," Sam said, climbing the stairs, "my son is a carnivore, same as you. I learned how to cook."

* * *

'Matthew' Masters stepped off the small plane, clutching his duffle in one hand and a small holographic transmitter in the other. His hologram fluttered around behind him, pointing up and the sky and pointing out interesting places and sights. "Oh, Honey, look at that skyline!"

"Yes, the pinnacle of human evolution, I'm sure," the man muttered darkly, glaring around the tarmac in search of someone to help carry his luggage. He was far too old to carry it himself, even if he really _could_ carry it without any trouble. When a small robot finally trundled up to him, Matthew placed his duffle on the waiting carrier and told the robot which hotel he was staying at. His luggage would meet him there.

The hologram kept next to its master, its blue shirt 'blowing' in the breeze. "Where are we going first, Darling?"

"Check that stupid sensor," he grunted. "Then go to the hotel and not step out again. I don't want to run into a variety of people that call this place home."

"Oh, you're such a spoil-sport," the hologram chided happily. It was already searching for the best restaurant in town and making a reservation for that night. "We'll go out to eat, of course. Then we can go on a tour!"

"I already know this town," Matthew grumbled, but he didn't argue.

"_TAXI!"_ The hologram waved down a passing car and ushered Matthew into the cab. Accessing its memory files took all of two moments. "Corner of Perennial Street and Third, please." With a chirp from the robotic driver, they vanished into Amity Park.

* * *

Danny slowly cut up the pepper he'd been given, clumsily chopping at the thick vegetable. "I thought you said you were over the veggies."

"It's just a pepper, Danny," Sam said with a regally arched eyebrow. "And stop mashing it – it's not supposed to be a pepper pulp. Chop it."

With a half-hearted grumble, Danny slowed down and started to slice more slowly.

"We'll get the guest bedroom set up for you," Sam said as she stirred the large pot of pasta. "You can stay as long as you like, of course. Mi casa es su casa and all that. A couple weeks, at the minimum. It'll take at least that long to get 'Danny Fenton' wiped out of all the computers and databases. And you'll have to get used to living in 2078." She shot him a vaguely evil grin. "All sorts of stuff to learn."

"All sorts," Danny repeated, rolling his eyes.

She bopped him on the head with her spoon, a grin on her face. "Don't act all teenager with me. I know that look."

Danny opened his mouth to shoot an answer back, but the door opened at that moment, drawing his attention. A middle-aged man, maybe forty years old, sauntered in the door. Not even noticing Danny, he walked up to Sam and pressed a kiss to her cheek. "Evening, Mom."

Carefully cutting up the last bit of the pepper, Danny studied the newcomer. Nicely cut black hair, blue eyes, a little too pale, and a fluid way of moving that made it seem like he was more gliding on the floor than walking on it. Biting back on his jealousy and a spike of what felt suspiciously like anger, Danny pushed his chopped peppers into a bowl and then set down his knife with a bit more force than absolutely necessary.

The man turned and the noise, spotted Danny, and hesitated. "Hi," he said, blinking. "Mom, did you pick up another stray?"

Sam smiled. "Danny? This is Danny." She gestured towards her best friend. "Danny Fenton."

"The dead one?" the man deadpanned.

"Locked in a Thermos, thanks," Danny said and felt a shiver of recognition when he met the man's gaze. He'd seen those eyes before… but where?

"Ah," the man murmured, still obviously confused, but willing to roll with it. "And thus the odd uncle-father figure returns from the grave."

Danny blinked, rocking back on his heels. "What?"

"Danny," Sam broke in, a whisper of a laugh on her lips when both of the males turned towards her. She looked pointedly at her best friend. "_Danny_. This is Danny… Danielle's son."

* * *

Matthew Masters and his holographic companion crouched over the small transmitter still hidden on top of the apartment building on the corner of Perennial and Third. The old man was poking at the sensor, a look of clear disbelief on his face.

"It seems to be in perfect working condition," the hologram stated helpfully.

"I know," Matthew mumbled.

The hologram hesitated. "It's not sabotaged, like the others might have been."

"I know."

"So, we can assume the information we received was correct."

Matthew shot the hologram a glare, his hard gaze only softening slightly when he saw the digital earnest love in his hologram's eyes. "I already know that. You can stop stating the obvious."

The hologram grinned. "There's a new halfa in Amity Park."

Taking a deep breath, Matthew closed his eyes for a moment. "Yes. I deduced that, thank you."

"You're welcome, Honey," the hologram soothed. "You're so smart."

Matthew reached down and picked up the tiny sensor, turning it off before sticking it into his pocket. No doubt the poor thing was going crazy being so close to him. "Come on, Maddie."

The hologram got to its feet and watched its aging owner struggle to his own feet, wishing it could help. "Shall we go get something to eat how, Sweetie?"

"Sure."


	6. Chapter 6

"Danielle?!" Danny sputtered. "She's…"

"She died almost forty years ago," Sam said softly as she handed her son a pot full of water and directed her attention to him. "You're just in time to make the spaghetti noodles."

The man arched an eyebrow. "I just show up and you're going to put me to work without even a 'how are you doing?' or an 'anything new?'" When Sam just blinked at him and put a hand on her hip, he silently took the pot and dropped it onto the stove. Catching Danny's eye, Sam's son winked and grinned at him. "Danielle died when I was just a few months old," he said after a moment. "Destabilized, we think. Sam took me in and made me call her 'mom'."

"I did not," Sam grumbled with a roll of her eyes.

"Oh," Danny said softly, turning his attention back to the pepper he'd been cutting up. The news that Danielle was gone was a little disturbing. Based on how they referred to her so casually, the other two had apparently gotten over her death a long time ago.

"It worked out wonderfully, actually," Sam was saying. "I'd just divorced Eric when I heard about Danielle and I had no problem taking him in. Especially since I knew about Danielle's special abilities and the fact that Dan might have inherited them."

Danny looked up at Sam's son. "Did you?"

"I'm 'Dan' now?" the man said with an arched eyebrow, dumping a handful of spaghetti noodles into the now-boiling water. "And yes, I did. Kind of."

"Kind of?"

Dan held up a hand and focused on it, making it glow faintly. "That's about the best I can do." He grinned. "I still set off all of Matthew's little sensors though."

Blinking a few times, Danny shrugged and set down his knife. His brain felt a bit like it was about to explode with everything that he was learning, but there wasn't much he could do about it. "Oh." He stared down at the chopped up pepper for a moment. "The pepper's done," he said.

"Thanks Danny," Sam said, reaching over his shoulder and grabbing the cutting board. Then she hesitated, turning back and touching Danny's shoulder. "You okay?"

"I'm fine," Danny said, setting a small smile on his face.

She waited a beat, but returned the smile. "So… neither of us have gotten the whole story of what's happened." She arched an eyebrow, the unasked question perfectly obvious.

Danny bit his lip for a moment before opening his mouth to tell them everything he'd been through thus far.

Supernatural eyes gleamed in the unending nothingness that was all that remained of the Ghost Zone. Alone, the ghost ruled the endless abyss. "Well, well, well…" a cold voice muttered, the ghost drifting closer to a small picture that formed in the air. "What have we here?"

He studied the images before him, watching the young ghost-boy tell the two humans seated at the table about his plight. The boy was everything he'd remembered from so long ago – strong and cocky and overly confident. Seventy years trapped in a Fenton Thermos had done nothing to change that.

Of course, _this_ ghost knew all about being trapped in a Fenton Thermos.

"I couldn't beat you in a hundred years… that's what you gloated as you sucked me into that infernal device, wasn't it?" A snarl entered the ghost's voice, invisible fingers clenching tightly. "I _wasn't_ strong enough to beat you back then. Seventy years isn't nearly as long as I'd planned for you to stay trapped, but we shall see if it's enough."

"Daniel Phantom," he hissed. Freezing tendrils of energy swirled out of the emptiness and gently caressed the image, small coils twisting so that they would have been wrapped around the boy's throat if he'd been really there. "Welcome home."

"Everything is just so… _different_," Danny said softly, swirling his spaghetti with his fork. Although he'd originally been a bit dubious about how many vegetables went into the sauce, it had actually turned out to be quite delicious. "I dunno. I keep looking around, thinking I'll see something that looked the way it was before."

He was almost talked-out by this point. He'd told them all about being freed, meeting Jazz in the cemetery, and that whole day of nothingness. He'd glossed over most of the terror and confusion that had reigned in his mind those few days since he'd been let out of the Thermos, but he was pretty sure Sam picked up on it anyways. Even though she hadn't seen him for seventy years, she still seemed to know him perfectly.

"A thermos in the backyard," Sam whispered, shaking her head. "That's…"

"…typical?" Danny filled in, smiling faintly. "That's my life, passing secretly by right under people's noses."

Sam caught his gaze. "I was looking for a word more along the lines of 'horrible'. We were always so close… Danny… I'm so sorry…"

"It's not your fault," Danny said with a shrug. "I know you guys looked for me."

"I wonder how you ended up back there," Sam's son murmured.

"Ghost probably." Danny pushed his spaghetti around for a moment before taking a bite. "I can't count the number of ghosts that want… wanted… me out of the way. It could have been any of them."

"It wouldn't take long to steal a Thermos and bury it in the backyard when you've got ghost powers," Sam agreed.

Silence fell. Danny quietly chewed on his spaghetti glancing around Sam's kitchen while he tried to figure out what to say next. Finally, his gaze fell on Dan – Danielle's son. He didn't like the thought that it somehow made Dan _his_ son as well. The concept of having a female clone was hard enough to swallow most days. The idea that the man sitting at the table who was nearly twice his age was someone his son was too bizarre to even contemplate.

Dan looked up, catching Danny looking at him. Identical blue eyes fixed on each other, hair flopping messily over their foreheads in a distressingly similar fashion. "So what's on the plan next?" Dan asked, cocking an eyebrow.

"We erase Danny Fenton from history." Sam's voice was soft, but her gaze was fierce. "We set Danny up to exist here, pick a new name, and get him back on track."

"And track down Vlad," Danny added. "See if he knows a way to fix this."

Nodding in agreement, Sam stuck the last piece of spaghetti into her mouth and pushed her plate away. She propped her elbows on the table and laced her fingers under chin, a grin drifting onto her face. "But first and foremost," she said, "we need to go shopping. I've wanted to make you go 'Goth' you since I was twelve."

* * *

"A glass of spring water and a roast chicken salad please," the holographic program ordered for its master, smiling at the waiter and folding its hands in its lap. When Matthew opened his mouth to argue, it merely glared at him. "You need to watch your cholesterol intake, Honey."

Matthew grumbled silently after he nodded his agreement to the waiter, momentarily debating turning off the hologram. But whenever he looked into its violet eyes and listened to its sophisticatedly programmed laugh, he always found an excuse to leave it on. The woman it was modeled on was long dead and buried, but his emotions were still alive in his ancient heart.

It was just a hologram… but it wasn't in so many ways.

"Are you going to search for the new halfa?" the hologram asked, its eyes twinkling in the light.

Matthew shook his head. Although he couldn't find a single problem with the small sensor that had detected another halfa in Amity Park, he couldn't bring himself to actually believe it. Since Daniel's disappearance and Danielle's death, he'd been alone and he fully planned on being alone for the rest of his life. There was no new halfa in Amity Park. There couldn't be. "No," he grunted.

"Do you want to visit the cemetery again?"

"No." Matthew's eyes drifted to the other patrons of the small café, watching them chat with each other.

"Isn't that Mrs. Madel?"

Matthew's head jerked around, his eyes fixing on the woman walking past the café's window. He'd kept an eye on Daniel's best friend over the years, always assuming when Daniel reappeared from his mysterious vanishing act, she would be the first he would visit. Even though he hadn't seen her in decades, he easily recognized her vivid eyes. "Yes it is," he murmured, ignoring the waiter that appeared over his shoulder to place a glass of water on his table.

Taking a small sip, his eyes drifted to the man escorting her around town. "And there's her son," he continued, almost talking to himself. "Why she chose to adopt a boy named 'Daniel' I will never understand. That's got to do nothing but bring back memories." _Which is why I will never again get a cat named Maddie_, Matthew thought to himself.

"Who's the last one?" the hologram asked, cocking its head to the side as a teenager dressed in black clothes followed the two adults, arms loaded with bags. "Based on similarities of appearance, I assume that Daniel had a son?"

Matthew stared out the window for a long moment, remaining completely silent even after the trio had passed the café. Disregarding the hologram's question completely, Matthew felt a very Vlad-like smile cross his face. "Now _that's_ interesting."


	7. Chapter 7

Danny yawned as Sam finally allowed the trio to head back to her house, his arms full of the bags of clothes Sam had insisted on buying him. The sun had long since set and the stars were burning brightly in the night sky. Danny took comfort in looking up at them for a moment, catching sight of a familiar constellation through the trees. At least the stars hadn't changed at all. Seventy years was nothing compared to the life of a star.

"Danny?" Sam called, light spilling out from the front door as she pushed it open. "You coming?"

Wrenching his eyes away from the stars, Danny walked along the path and stepped into the light, following his friend into her home. He set a smile on his face and managed to keep up a bit of conversation as she showed him upstairs to one of the guest rooms despite his flagging energy. "I'm surprised you bought such a big house," he said. "I always pictured you living in something small and eco-friendly."

"I thought so too," Sam said with a shrug. "But this one was screaming 'home' and I managed to convert it. It's actually got a negative carbon footprint now – the solar panels and things generate more power than I use. So I'm okay with it."

"That," Dan added, trailing behind them, "and someone less environmentally conscious would have bought it. Let them live in the eco-friendly houses that actually make sense for one person to live in and Mom can take care of this huge house that isn't so environmentally wonderful. Yadda, yadda, and so on and so forth."

"Had this conversation before?" Danny asked, glancing over his shoulder.

Dan grinned. "Only a few hundred times. And only when someone asks why she's living alone in such a big house."

"Shush, boy," Sam muttered. "Don't you have to work tomorrow?"

"My own mother, kicking me out of her house for engaging in polite conversation. What is the world coming to?" Dan laughed, then caught Danny stifling another yawn. "But yes, I do have to go."

Danny watched, feeling a little out of place as Dan stepped around him and wrapped Sam up in a hug. "Bye, Danny," Sam whispered, giving him a hug before allowing the man to step away from him. "Thanks for helping with shopping."

"Mm, yes. Shopping, my specialty," Dan said, sending an eye roll in Danny's direction. "You _really _needed my help with that. I'll see you later, Danny." He backed down the stairs, sending a, "Call me if you need anything," back in their direction.

For a moment, Danny stared at the empty stairs, then looked back up at his best friend. It was still weird to see her as eighty-six rather than sixteen, and a little ache started in his heart. _I want to go home_.

He shook his head when Sam started down the hallway towards one of the guest rooms, watching his feet move under him and quietly berating himself. He _couldn't_ go home – not anymore. With the Ghost Zone 'reformatted' and all the ghosts (including Clockwork) gone and no sign of any sort of hope, Danny knew that he was stuck in the future. There wouldn't be any miracle ending to this story.

_I still just want to go home_.

"Hey," came Sam's voice, and Danny looked up, blinking at her. She had pushed open a door and was gazing at him with her amethyst eyes. "Standard question?"

"I'm fine," Danny said, "just tired." He figured it was as good an excuse as any for the strange feeling swirling inside of him. The day's events were catching up to him – talking with Jazz and meeting Sam and her son and learning that Vlad was probably still alive… it was all a lot to take in. There was simply no more pushing it off to think about later. "I'll be better tomorrow."

When he moved to walk past her, one wrinkled hand shot out to grab his shoulder. "You want to talk?"

"I want to sleep," he said, grinning at her and knowing the smile didn't quite reach his eyes. His smile faded at her look, but he simply shook his head. "Really. I'll be better tomorrow."

"You're not invincible, Danny. I remember that you always seemed to think that you were on top of the world and that nothing got to you." Her eyes were gentle. "But I know better."

He looked away, studying the room for a moment. Through the shadows, he could make out a very inviting-looking bed. "I know, Sam," he said softly. He knew that it was getting to him, slowly eating away at his core. A large part of him, however, didn't want to talk about it. An even larger part didn't want to talk about it to this old woman who used to be his best friend.

When she finally let go of his shoulder, he stepped into the room and dumped his armload of bags on the floor before turning around to look at her. She stood in the doorway for a moment, shaking her head. "It's like a dream, Danny," she said. Enveloped in the shadows with the light to her back, Danny could almost imagine her still being a teenager, and that thought made his eyes start to burn.

_I'm homesick_, he realized sharply. Between his exhaustion and everything that had happened, the feeling had snuck up on him without him noticing. He let out a long breath, then shook his head. "Some dream."

Even though he couldn't see it, he knew that a smile had slipped onto his best friend's face. "'Night, Danny."

"Goodnight, Sam."

After the door had closed, Danny quietly slipped into a pair of the pajamas Sam and bought and got into bed, but his mind wouldn't stay quiet. He managed to stay in the bed for a whole of ten minutes before slipping out of bed and switching to his ghost form. Phasing through the ceiling, he landed on the roof and settled down between two of the solar panels, lying on his back and staring up at the stars.

The same stars had shown down on him three days… seventy years… ago and they lulled his chaotic spirit into something resembling peace. It didn't take long before he drifted off to sleep.

* * *

Deep in the nothingness that remained of the Ghost Zone, a cold voice was snarling. He smashed the image of the sleeping teenager with his clawed fist, reveling in the fury that seeing the young teenager had brought up from the depths of his core. "How _dare_ he?" the voice whispered. "How dare he find some semblance of peace? He's supposed to be tormented before I torture him."

The ghost paced in mid-air, his gaze drifted over the green abyss. None of the barely-formed ghosts dared fall into his sight; their deformed masses of consciousness scuttled off to hide in the endless expanse, otherwise the self-proclaimed 'King' of the New Ghost Zone would tear them back apart.

With a growl, the ghost snatched up a ripped-open Fenton Thermos, running a cold finger along a jagged edge, his eyes burning brightly. Suddenly, he breathed out. "Fine. _Fine._ Let him have his moment of peace, just like I let his silly clone have her moment. He'll see me for what I can do in due time."

A smile formed on his face, eerie in the semi-darkness as he studied the battered Thermos in his hands, simultaneously cradling it like a cherished infant and clutching it like he was strangling the teenager. "Good night, little Danny. Before long you'll realize that I'm still here."

* * *

Waking up on a roof – while nowhere near the worst thing that had happened to him recently – definitely wasn't one of the highlights. Beyond the odd feeling of vertigo and the momentary panic that he had almost rolled right off the edge in his sleep, there was the fact that the sun was blindingly bright in the morning with no curtains. Danny blinked at the sunrise, wiping bits of grit from his eyes and stretching. His back popped, complaining about spending the night on the hard surface.

He just sat there, lazily running a hand through his hair, listening to the birds starting to chirp and the day getting off to its start. His brain not really engaged at all, it took a moment for him to remember why he was sleeping on the roof. When the thought finally penetrated his sleep-addled mind, Danny groaned and closed his eyes.

It was day four of this disaster. Trapped in 2078 with no going back.

The depressing ache of homesickness from yesterday started to swirl through him again, but he solidly slammed the floodgates in his mind before his emotions could catch up with him. Phasing cleanly through the roof, he landed on the floor of Sam's guest room and pawed through the bags lying on the floor. It only took a few minutes for him to snap the tags off a shirt and pants and be dressed, headed downstairs.

"Sam?" he called softly, walking from room to room and poking his head into various places. Eventually he ended up in the kitchen, gazing at the empty room with a sigh. Apparently Sam _still_ wasn't a morning person.

Shaking off the weirdness of being in Sam's kitchen and using Sam's things, Danny dug through the cupboards for something to eat. He had a half-thought to make breakfast for her, but his cooking skills most likely hadn't improved with being trapped inside the Thermos. And there was the fact that she wasn't sixteen anymore. Making breakfast for a girl he had a serious crush on was one thing… making breakfast for that same girl when she was seventy years older than him was another.

Eventually he ended up choosing cereal, quietly crunching through a bowl of a brand he'd never heard of, staring out the window. He swirled the cereal with his spoon, wrinkling his nose at the fact that not even the cereal was the same anymore. Everything had changed so much.

Even _he_ was about to change. Danny Fenton was seventy years dead and buried in a graveyard next to his parents. He couldn't stay Danny Fenton for much longer; it would raise too many eyebrows. He'd need to be a whole new person by the time he left Sam's house. Everything about him needed to disappear and he'd have a new identity, new name, new life… He couldn't ever go back to who he had been.

He shook his head sharply, dislodging the train of thought from his mind. It was depressing to think about and Danny could feel his eyes start to burn at the thought of it. For now, he just needed to stay focused on what need to be done right now.

"Danny? You're up early."

Danny looked up from his almost empty bowl at the sound of his best friend's voice. The smile faded a little when he saw how old and fragile she looked, a robe tied tightly around her ancient frame and slippers on her feet. "The sun woke me up," he answered with a shrug, looking back down at his cereal.

It was weird. All the awkwardness from yesterday was back. While meeting Sam's adopted son and being dragged out shopping, Danny had almost managed to forget that he didn't really fit in and it had felt close to normal. He'd laughed and teased Sam endlessly, telling Sam's son all sorts of stories of Sam's childhood. But now that easiness was gone.

Sam was old. He'd been gone for seventy years. She'd had a life he knew nothing about and he still had one to live.

Looking at her he saw his best friend, but he also saw the stranger that she'd become. Sitting in the kitchen with her felt like eating breakfast with someone he'd never met before.

"How are you feeling this morning?"

Danny looked up, blinking at her. In all of his memories, Sam had been there. She'd been the rock he could count on, the person he could trust, and the keeper of most of his secrets. She had known things Tucker could only dream about. He could tell her (almost) anything and, with the exception of that crush thing he'd developed, he'd never felt the desire to hide anything from her.

Today…

Today, he didn't want to tell her. She was Sam, but she wasn't. His eyes traced over the lines and wrinkles in her face, catching on the grays in her hair, studying the age spots that dotted her skin.

He would have told Sam, four days and seventy years ago, about his homesickness and how lost he felt. He would have said how scared he was, knowing he was about to throw his entire life away. He would have mentioned that his parents were dead, Tucker was dead, and – to him – it had happened only days ago. There were huge, gaping sores in his mind and they hurt like nothing he'd ever felt before.

But this wasn't his Sam anymore.

"I'm fine," he said, looking down at the milk still left in his bowl and stirring it around with his spoon. The words didn't sound convinced at all and Danny took in a breath, repeating himself more firmly. "I'm fine."

It was a lie. And based off the look on Sam's face before she turned around to make herself breakfast, they both knew it.

* * *

Matthew Masters hadn't felt this alive in nearly fifty years. The grin on his face was almost feral, his fingers tapping on the keys of his computer with a delighted speed, his eyes sparkling in a way that took years off of his features. He was carefully inputting the data from the sensor that had been triggered, plotting the changes over the course of seventy years, matching it up…

When the result flashed on the screen, Matthew sat back and stared at the screen in dazed astonishment. He'd _known_ what the answer would be before he was started, but he'd never been one to jump into something without proof. Now here it was, his proof: plain as the nose on his face, but no less startling.

"How in the world…?" he whispered.

The hologram turned itself on at his words, sitting down next to him on the bed and leaning over to read the screen. It didn't really need to do that – it _was_ the computer, after all, and could have just accessed the database for the knowledge – but it had been programmed to act as human as possible. "Sweetie," it said softly, adding in a confused tone. "Isn't that what you knew it would say?"

"Of course," Matthew answered, glancing into the hologram's violet eyes. "But I still didn't believe it. Who would have thought that Daniel would show up after all of these years, looking exactly like he did seventy years ago?"

"He hasn't aged," the hologram stated. The computer screen changed to two pictures – one of Daniel Fenton seventy years ago and one of the boy from yesterday, borrowed from a security camera. Discounting clothing, they were identical.

Matthew's blue eyes narrowed slightly, glancing from one image to the other. "No, he hasn't." He leaned forwards a little, his forehead furrowing. "And it _is_ him." Silence descended for a moment before Matthew muttered, "It's not Daniel's style to simply vanish. He was too attached to his family and friends – he never would have put them through that torment."

"So what do you think happened to him?" The hologram blinked its eyes a few times.

"It wasn't his choice," the oldest half-ghost said slowly, "that much is obvious. He wasn't in the ghost zone or he would have been annihilated with the rest of them, and he wasn't in the human world. I had too many sensors and trackers out there for him to avoid them all." Matthew breathed out, steepling his fingers and pressing them against his lips, trying to figure out a place that wasn't in either the human world or the ghost zone. "And to not age…"

"Perhaps he simply ages slowly, like you do?"

Matthew shook his head, staring at the image of his one-time nemesis and feeling an odd emotion creeping up inside his chest. "No. Daniel would still look to be in his forties by this point. He hasn't been aging at all."

The hologram shook its head, its circuits and pathways not able to make the leap of logic to understand what had happened to the young demighost. It looked at its master, waiting patiently. Time meant little to the sophisticated computer program.

Finally _Vlad Masters_ reached out and shut off the screen, getting to his feet. His eyes were blazing with energy and the smile on his face was one that hadn't been seen in decades. "Come, Maddie," he said, grabbing his coat and walking towards the door with a snap in his step. "We have places to be."


	8. Chapter 8

Danny felt decidedly out of place, stuffed into the booth at the restaurant. Jazz (eighty-eight) was sitting on one of side of him and Sam (eighty-six) was seated on the other. Jazz's daughter Sarah (technically his niece, though she was old enough to be his mother) was across the table and still eyeing him distrustfully, apparently not having forgiven him for going ghost in the car the first time they'd met, and Jazz's three grandchildren were stuffed alongside their mother, alternating between pestering Danny with endless questions and holding an epic straw war.

It didn't help that Sam and Jazz were talking over his head, apparently having relegated him to 'child without anything important to add'. "See, Jazz," Sam said, pointing to the napkin they'd been scribbling on, "_this_ is the part that's not going to be easy to do."

"You don't have a contact somewhere?" Jazz asked softly, wrinkling her forehead.

Sam shook her head, sighing. "No amount of money can erase someone from the government systems. Even though Danny's supposedly seventy years dead, they're not going to want to get rid of all the records that he ever existed. The local record files, sure, that's feasible. But the federal database?"

Danny swirled a french fry through his catsup, momentarily wishing for some Nasty Sauce, then wrinkling his nose when he felt a wash of depression as he realized he'd never get to eat that particular sauce ever again.

"We're not talking about _all_ of his records," Jazz said. "We don't need to make him never exist – just the identifiers. Fingerprints, dental records, things like that."

"It's still not possible."

Jazz scowled and took a drink of her coffee. "It's _got_ to be possible. Vlad did it, didn't he?"

A sigh came from Sarah and Danny looked up at her, seeing a long-suffering expressing on the woman's face. He recognized the look: it was the same one that Jazz used to give their parents whenever they started talking about ghosts. Danny sent her a small smile but Sarah simply stiffened and looked away.

"So find Vlad and ask him," Sam muttered sourly, using her finger to push at the ice cubes in her water in an eerily familiar gesture. "I'm sure he'd be eager to help once he finds out Danny's back."

Jazz sighed. "I'm sure," she said softly, her eyes turning to Danny for the first time in awhile. "How's your lunch, little brother?"

Danny blinked, surprised at being allowed to rejoin the conversation. "Fine," he said with a shrug. "It's no Nasty Burger though."

"I'm sure it's not," Jazz laughed. She turned serious after a moment and eyed him. "What do you think about all this?"

"Wiping me from existence?" he asked. "It's a conversation I've always dreamed about having." He sent her a sarcastic smile.

With a small roll of her eyes, Jazz prodded him with her elbow and said, "We'll get it all figured out." She was silent for a moment before leaning forwards again, looking past him to Sam. "What about Eric?"

Sam's expression was thunderous. "I'm not calling Eric."

"Doesn't he have contacts-"

"I'm not calling my ex-husband," Sam interrupted, fury scalding her voice.

Jazz let out a breath. "But…"

"No."

As the 'discussion' started to escalate over his head again, Danny tuned them out. He didn't want to hear about Sam's ex-husband and he didn't particularly want to think about Sam marrying someone. Focusing instead on the swirls of catsup on his plate, Danny felt a painful moment of longing. He wanted to go home more than anything right at that moment. No more arguing, no more everyone being too old, no more anything. Just his own bed, his own room, and his parents exploding things downstairs.

He dragged his eyes away from his plate to gaze around the restaurant. It was surprisingly similar to the ones he remembered – waiters and staff, a kitchen beyond swinging doors, clusters of tables and booths. With the notable exception of the prices, the entire restaurant itself could have been picked up and dropped seventy years into the past and no one would have been the wiser.

The patrons, however, were the giveaway that he was trapped in the future. Many were contentedly jabbering away to tiny holographic people, a few teenagers were playing some sort of video game that was being projected onto their table – Danny thought it looked a lot like Call of Duty with plates of spaghetti and forks rather than mountains and rough terrain – and others had projected their computer screens onto their tables and were busy working away.

He was about to turn his gaze back to the teenagers playing their game when he saw a woman standing by the door. She was dressed all in blue with her red hair pushed behind her ears. His mouth dropped open in astonishment and he stared at her, his eyes growing wider with every heartbeat. The woman looked just like his mother! She was just standing there, looking around with a small frown on her face. The staff never gave her a second glance, passing right next to her without a single question as to why she was there.

Danny glanced over at Jazz, but she was too busy arguing with Sam to answer the questions growing in his mind. When he looked back, the woman was gazing in his direction, meeting his eyes, a smile growing on her face.

There was no question about it. She was Maddie Fenton.

He stared at her in dazed amazement, his mind struggling to understand how she could be standing there if she was dead and buried, surprised to feel the ache in his heart and the burning of tears in his eyes. Just for a moment, it all felt like a horrible trick and that someone was going to jump out with a camera and yell 'surprise'. "Mom," he mouthed, looking from Jazz to his mother with a desperate desire to understand growing in his mind. "J-J-Jazz…"

"Not now, Danny," she said.

One of the waitresses seemed to walk right through his mother, not even batting an eye about it, and Danny finally caught on. His mother wasn't really there. She really was dead... a ghost.

The idea didn't process, however. The ghost zone had been reformatted – there _were_ no more ghosts. But a second, new thought was right on its heels. Perhaps new ghosts were still being created and the ghost zone was slowly rebuilding itself from the ground up. Maybe whatever the Guys in White had done wasn't permanent. His mother had died long after the government had destroyed the ghost zone; she wouldn't have been affected by what they had done.

The story suddenly made too much sense in Danny's mind. His mother, tormented over the fact that he was lost and that it was her fault, was continuing her search even after death. The person who despised ghosts more than anything had become one. She had stayed, waiting for him.

"Sam…" he started, but stopped himself. These two weren't _his_ Sam and _his_ Jazz anymore. Despite the fact that they were so close, he was alone. The harsh reality was that seventy years separated them and he had to start learning to solve his own problems. He couldn't go running to them all the time anymore. "I'm going to the bathroom," he said simply, finding no reason to change an age-old excuse, turned himself invisible, and phased through the table.

Ignoring the annoyed voices of Sam and Jazz – and the excited jabbering of Jazz's grandkids when he reappeared next to them – Danny worked his way over to his mother. The closer he got, the more sure he was that he was seeing Maddie Fenton. The small scar on her face was still there, she smiled just the right way, and that lock of hair was tucked behind her ear the way it always was. He couldn't tear his eyes off his mother, only blinking when his eyes got blurry from the tears that were threatening to form.

The fact that his ghost sense hadn't gone off never registered in his mind.

He was only a few feet away when his mother smiled, turned, and walked straight through the wall behind her, beckoning him to follow. Danny glanced over his shoulder at his 'family', then shook his head and followed.

* * *

"Mom?" The word was wrenched from his throat the moment he stepped into the alley behind the restaurant. Four days (seventy years) of longing and homesickness slammed into him when his mother smiled and nodded. Danny took a small step towards her, reaching out with his hand but stopping himself from actually touching her. He didn't want to break the illusion… if this was one.

"Danny," she said softly, her eyes brimming with tears. "Danny, we missed you."

Her voice snapped what little control Danny had left over himself. He took a few steps forwards and reached out, feeling tears in his eyes when his hand passed straight through her. Hands fell to his sides, useless, and he gazed at her with a sort of desperate longing. He wanted to throw himself into her arms, feel the solidness of her body hugging him one last time.

But none of that was possible. Not anymore.

"It's okay, Danny," she whispered, bringing her hand up and brushing it over his cheek. He couldn't feel it, but it managed to dislodge a tear anyways. "It'll be okay now." His mother smiled just like she always had, full of confidence and power. There wasn't a problem in the universe Maddie Fenton couldn't tackle.

Words caught in Danny's throat. He wanted to say so much, to explain about everything that had happened, but the only thing that made it through was a chocked out, "I'm sorry."

"It's not your fault," she whispered. Her phantom fingers traced the line on his cheek where the tear had fallen. "Don't cry, sweetheart. It's not your fault."

Danny reached a hand up and swiped at the tears still growing in his eyes. "How can you say that?" Danny said. "If I would have told you about the accident-"

"None of this is your fault," she repeated, more firmly. "Don't ever think that."

He nodded and swallowed heavily. "Okay."

She smiled, her eyes twinkling at his agreement, and that brought a small smile to Danny's face. "We've been looking for you for so long," she said. "Sweetheart… where have you been?"

"I was trapped in the Thermos," he said. "Jazz's grandkids dug me out of the backyard and set me free a couple days ago." He glanced over his shoulder at the wall, looking towards where Sam and Jazz would be sitting. "I've been living with Sam," he added, quietly glossing over his night in the cemetery, his night in the tree, and the night in the hotel.

"All that time," she said softly, shaking her head, "you were buried in the backyard in a Thermos?"

"Which explains the lack of aging."

Danny's head whipped around at the new voice, his heart slamming to full force in his chest at the very familiar tones. Blue eyes sparkled with red embers in the darkness, the shadowed figure's long white hair pulled back into a small ponytail at the nape of his neck. "Vlad…" he whispered, tensing at the sight of his enemy.

"Matthew, if you please," the man said, stepping out of the shadows and picking a bit of dirt off his jacket. "_Vlad Masters_ would be a hundred and ten this year. I'm his 'son', for all intents and purposes."

'Matthew' was quite a bit older than Danny remembered Vlad being. Wrinkles and lines drifted across his face, making him look to be in his sixties. "How are you still alive?" Danny demanded, shifting his weight so that he was between Vlad… 'Matthew'… and his mother.

"Apparently half-ghosts age about half as fast as normal people," Vlad said with a shrug. "It's been ninety years since your father destroyed my life and yet I look like only forty years have passed." His eyes gleamed, the smile on his face twisting a little. "And you look just like you did all those years past. Still has stubborn as always?"

Danny's eyes narrowed at the slight jab, his hands curling into fists. Even after all these years, Vlad knew exactly how to rub him the wrong way. Judging from the quirk in Vlad's smile, the older halfa knew it all too well. "Go away. I'm busy," he said shortly, wanting to turn back to talk to his mother. He didn't have time for Vlad's mind games.

"I'm afraid you're not," Vlad said, shaking his head. He shifted his gaze from Danny to Maddie. "Come here, Maddie."

The blue-suited woman nodded and stepped towards him, walking past Danny without even glancing back at him. Danny watched, his mouth open slightly and his heart almost stopping in his chest, as his mother – _his mother – _smiled brilliantly at Vlad and greeted him with a "Hi, Sweetie."

Vlad touched the watch on his wrist and his mother vanished without a trace.

Danny felt the world crack in two.

* * *

Seeing the expression on Daniel's face when his 'mother' vanished hurt Vlad a lot more than he would ever admit. The plan had been a great one – send in the hologram and lure Daniel outside. The one thing Vlad hadn't counted on was the boy's pesky emotional attachment to his family. He hadn't even thought to contemplate what it would be like for Daniel, finding out his family was dead and then, scant days later, see one seemingly rise from the grave.

The moment Daniel had stepped through the wall with that look on his face, Vlad had wanted to stop the plan and take it all back. Suddenly it had jumped to a level of cruelty that even Vlad Masters wouldn't sink to. But he had decided to let it play out for awhile; not nearly as long as he had originally intended, but long enough for him to understand what had happened to Daniel. It had been instantly obvious that once the deception was uncovered, Daniel would likely never speak to him again.

For some reason, that knowledge bit deeper into Vlad than he'd been expecting.

None of that compared, however, to watching the young half-ghost process the fact that Vlad had made his mother disappear. Vlad sighed at the confused mix of anger, fear, and loneliness that swirled in Daniel's face. "I'm sorry, Daniel," he said softly.

"What did you do to her?" Daniel demanded, his hands clenching into fists and green lights sparkling into his eyes. "Bring my mom back!"

Vlad kept his face impassive, but it took all of his hundred ten years of experience to do so. "That wasn't your mother," he said slowly, gently. When Daniel started to shake his head in denial, Vlad added, "That was a hologram. I programmed her years ago to look like Maddie and to act like her."

Daniel's mouth moved, no sound coming out, and Vlad could see the understanding slamming into him.

"I used her to bring you out here so we could talk without Samantha and Jasmine," he said, watching as Daniel made the transition from confusion to raw fury. "I hadn't meant for you to-"

He never got the chance to finish his sentence. Not that it mattered; he highly doubted Daniel would have accepted his half-apology anyway. Daniel switched over to his ghost form in a flash of light and threw himself at Vlad, murder gleaming in his green eyes.

And, oddly, Vlad didn't blame him.

* * *

The self-proclaimed King wasn't watching the fight on the tiny tear in the fabric of the ghost world. Instead, his red eyes were staring down at the Thermos that he was cradling in his hands, tracing his claws gently over the ragged crack in its surface. His Thermos.

He still remembered that day all those many years ago. The emptiness of being trapped in the Thermos extending on forever and ever, then there was a sudden change. A bend, a dent, a weakness in his Thermos that he'd fixated on. He'd slammed against it over and over again until the Thermos ripped open sending him tumbling into the abyss of the ghost zone in a flare of devil's fire.

He had been free, finally.

Clockwork had been missing from his usual perch – that was the first sign that something wasn't quite right – but he'd ignored it, assuming that Clockwork had run from him. It wasn't until he'd noticed that Clockwork's tower _itself_ seemed to be melting around him that he had started to wonder what was going on.

The rest of the ghost zone had been in pure chaos that day. Ghosts were slowly dissolving, wasting away, screaming in pain and fear. Some were obsessively protecting their lairs, others were running around in panic, and still others were just sitting there and watching themselves disintegrate.

He had loved it. He had flown through the ghost zone, insane laughter bubbling in his throat whenever he saw another ghost fighting its death, on a search for one ghost in particular: the one ghost who always knew where to find anything in the human world.

It had taken days for all the ghosts to die. The shrieking had been horribly wonderful; the ghost zone more terrifying than he could ever remember. It wasn't until the screams were dying away that he found the ghost he was looking for.

The Box Ghost had been lying on one of the dissolving floating islands, his blue fingers tightly clutching what was left of his daughter. Fear and sorrow had warred for dominance in his eyes all those years ago as he listened to the new Ghost King make his demands. The pudgy ghost, pulling his daughter close to him and allowing tears to drip from his eyes, and choked out the story of Danny Phantom.

"He was sucked into a Thermos – it wasn't my fault," the Box Ghost had rasped all those years ago. "I heard his parents talking about it when I was trying to save one of the crushed boxes in his backyard. He always crushed the boxes…"

A threatening glare had brought the Box Ghost back on track, his voice little more than a whisper. "I thought it was a good plan, revenge for sucking me into that Thermos all those times. Nobody sucks the Box Ghost into a cylindrical container!" For a moment, the Box Ghost had almost sounded back to his old self, but the power in his voice died away almost as quickly as it had arrived. "I took the Thermos and buried it in the backyard."

The new Ghost King had laughed about that, nearly doubling over in hilarity at the thought of the great 'Danny Phantom' being beaten by the _Box Ghost_.

"I was going to let him go," the Box Ghost had said sadly, his tears dripping onto his daughter's head as she dissolved into nothingness. Staring down at his empty, melting hands, the Box Ghost whispered, "I was going to let him go, I just forgot…"

Dark Dan Phantom had left the Box Ghost to die, delighting in the information that his younger self had received an object lesson in 'what goes around, comes around'. As the rest of the ghost zone screamed its way into nothingness, the eerie screams of the doomed ghosts persisting for weeks after the last one had vanished, Dark Phantom had prowled his new domain, untouched by the bomb the Guys in White had unleashed on the ghost zone. His Thermos had protected him from the destabilizing blast that was the destruction of everything else.

The new King had no intention of ever letting Danny Phantom out of his Thermos – the twerp could rot forever inside that thing – but he had a planned for the eventuality of Danny's escape. And now that the young annoyance was out and free, Dark Phantom knew exactly what to do. After all, he'd already gone through his plan once with that clone-girl and it had worked fabulously.

"Danny Phantom," he whispered, his red eyes finally coming off his Thermos to study the images of his younger self battling an older Vlad Masters, "you'll never know what hit you."

* * *

Danny threw himself at 'Matthew' Masters, the knowledge that the elder halfa had tricked him so thoroughly burning through him like a brand. He was beyond thought. All he wanted to do was hurt the other as much as possible.

Vlad, however, had a whole lifetime of knowledge behind him: ninety-some years of practice compared to Danny's two. Danny never stood a chance.

Lost to his rage, he never saw Vlad flicker out of being for a moment and reappear right next to him. Vlad reached out an intangible hand and carefully tapped Danny's mind, swiping his hand through just the right part. Danny collapsed to the ground, unconscious, his scream of fury dying in his throat.

Vlad stood there for a long moment, gazing down at the younger halfa. "I'm sorry," he said softly. He knelt down and touched Danny's forehead. "I'm truly sorry, Daniel."

Then Vlad picked up the half-ghost, twisted himself into Plasmius, and took to the sky.


	9. Chapter 9

Danny's brain hurt even before he was fully awake – the light was pounding through his eyelids and his entire body was aching. It eventually crossed his mind that he was lying on something soft, probably a bed, and that there was the annoying sound of typing in the background. Each click of the keys slammed through his brain like sledgehammers.

Why he was lying in a bed with someone typing was beyond him. He couldn't get his mind to do anything other than groan in pain. Eventually he must have made a noise, as the irritating noises suddenly ceased and there was the sound of a chair squeaking.

"There's an aspirin by the bed if you want it."

He winced away from the voice, feeling the ache of the movement through every muscle. He used the wince to grab the pillow under his head and move it over his head, hoping to block out the horrible light and sounds.

There was a sound of a heavy breath being let out and someone moved across the room. Danny felt the presence settle onto the bed next to him, heard the slight clink of a glass being picked up. "Daniel," the voice said, patient frustration obvious.

Danny moaned and attempted to bury himself deeper into the soft bed. Why did his head hurt so much?

The pillow vanished suddenly, the light suddenly burning even through Danny's closed eyes. "Up," the voice commanded, a hand physically grabbing the back of his neck and pulling him upright despite Danny's half-conscious protests. "I know it hurts; I'm trying to help you." Something small and round was pushed past his lips, then the cold of a glass pressed against his mouth. "Swallow, Daniel."

Figuring his best chance of getting to hide again was to simply do as he was asked, Danny took a mouthful of the water and swallowed the small pill. The hand released him, allowing him to sink back to the bed and pull the blanket over his head.

The voice chuckled slightly, somehow introducing a patronizing sound to it, and the presence left his side. "Give it a few minutes. Yell at me when you're ready."

Danny figured that was a great idea. He burrowed himself deeper into the blankets, brushed away the mystery of where he was and why he was there, and allowed himself to drift back into unconsciousness.

* * *

Daniel Madel stifled a bit of a yawn as he walked into the restaurant, scanning for his mother. The number of times Daniel received frantic phone calls from Sam could be counted on one hand, so when the worried call had come in that his teenage father/uncle/whatever had disappeared (again), he had found a way to skip out of work for a few hours. He finally found her, sitting stiffly in a booth with Jazz.

"Mom," he greeted, sliding into the seat next to her with a bit of a smile. "Mrs. Carter."

His grin grew a little at the annoyed look his aunt-ish family member gave him. "I've told you before that I will hunt you down if you call me that again," Jazz said, a dark look in her eyes. "Any son of Sam's will _not_ call me 'Mrs. Carter."

Daniel didn't believe a word she said, but he nodded seriously anyways. "What's up?"

"Danny's missing." Sam looked up at him, her violet eyes full of worry. "I was hoping you could help me look for him."

Daniel quirked his eyebrow. "Why would I know where he was hiding? I've met him for a grand total of four hours." His mother shot him a level look and Daniel sighed a little. "Fine, fine," he muttered, pushing himself to his feet and holding out a hand. "I'll drive you around."

Sam's face eased slightly, smiling a little. "I know a few places we can check." Reaching out to take his hand, she slowly got to her feet. "Jazz is going to stay here for a little bit longer to make sure he doesn't come back."

"Excellent plan," Daniel said softly as he lead his mother through the restaurant. He turned back to send his almost-aunt a wave before pushing open the doors and heading out into the sunlight.

"And," Sam added with a conspiratorial wink once the door was safely closed behind them, "you can use your talents to help."

With a little sound in his throat and a slight roll of his eyes, Daniel pointed to his car and followed his eighty-something mother across the parking lot. If his father/uncle was trapped in a dark room and needed a flashlight or if he needed a prescription filled, Daniel was perfect for the job. But when it came to anything else?

He blew some of the hair out of his eyes. "Great," he muttered.

* * *

The next time Danny opened his eyes, his body hurt considerably less than it had. He groaned slightly and curled up beneath the warm comforter, then pushed himself up and looked around, blinking.

A hotel room. A fancy one, too, with a flat-screen television and expensive-looking furniture. The curtains over the window, half-drawn to cover the setting sun, looked thick and luxurious.

Danny's eyebrows wrinkled as he examined his surroundings, trying to figure out where he was. A glance at the clock reinforced the information he'd already gotten from the window, that it was late evening, but nothing more than that. He remembered hurting. He remembered being at the diner with Sam…

"Oh yeah," he muttered as the knowledge that he was trapped in the future came slicing back into his mind. Rubbing the grit out of his eyes, he pushed at the depressed feeling that momentarily swamped his heart. The feeling didn't go away, it _never_ went away, but at least he could move it out of the way and ignore it for awhile longer.

The diner. Watching people play that strange computer game. Sam and Jazz talking over his head like he was just a child who couldn't handle himself. His moth-

"Vlad." The word came out as a growl, looking around the hotel with a gleam in his eye. But the fruit loop was nowhere to be seen. "Vlad!" Danny called out.

"Yes, Daniel?"

Danny got to his feet, nearly tripping over a blanket that had gotten trapped around his ankles. His eyes scanned the room, searching for the source of that voice. "Where are you?"

A snort sounded and Danny looked up towards the corner of the room, his gaze catching on a speaker set into the ceiling. "Do you seriously believe I'd be in the room with you when you woke up?"

Hovering for a moment, Danny determined that yes, the sound was coming from the speakers, and dropped back onto the bed with scowl. "Where are you?"

"Elsewhere," the voice said. "But if you calm down and listen for a few minutes, I'll tell you."

"You'll tell me?" Danny repeated sarcastically.

The TV screen flickered on, an image of Vlad Masters – a much-older-than-Danny-was-used-to Vlad Masters – settling into place. He was sitting on a bed much like the one in Danny's hotel room, his legs crossed, an expressionless look on his face. "I will. If you want to beat up an old man later, that would be your prerogative."

"Prerog…" Danny started, but then shook his head and stalked up to the TV, glaring into his archenemy's eyes. "I hate you; why should I listen to you?"

"Because I have the answers to your questions." Something unidentifiable flickered across the old man's face. "And I do… apologize… for the deception."

That got Danny to blink and settle back on his heels a moment. "You apologize?"

"It didn't occur to me that seeing a facsimile of your mother would cause you so much distress. I hadn't meant to upset you like that; I know how much her death hurts." For just a moment, an emotion that looked like grief and true sorrow slid through the older halfa's eyes. But it was gone almost as fast as it had come.

"How'd she die?" The question was wrenched from Danny's lips without thought. It had been a question he'd wanted to ask Jazz or Sam, but hadn't had the courage to actually say it.

"In her sleep," Vlad said softly. "Neither of your parents suffered, Daniel."

Some small muscle in Danny's shoulders that he hadn't known was tensed relaxed at that knowledge. He swallowed and looked down at the floor, taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly. Four days, now, since he'd learned of their deaths. Four days since he'd been orphaned.

He wasn't even beginning to process that knowledge or cope with it, but a second breath had the emotions and the information tucked further back into a corner of his brain. He'd think about being alone in this world later.

For now, he needed to deal with one really old enemy. "What do you want?"

* * *

Vlad Masters studied the screen in his room as Daniel stared at his feet. As much as Daniel hated having weaknesses, he hated letting someone else know what they were even more. Vlad was well aware of how much Daniel cared for his family and how much it must have hurt to find them gone.

After all these years, Vlad had started to think of Daniel as an adult. Perhaps it was natural progression as the decades went past, Vlad instinctively aging his young protégé in his mind, or perhaps it was just wishful thinking on his part. But it shocked him in many ways to see Daniel like this.

A child. An orphaned child, on top of it all.

It almost tugged at his heart.

When Daniel looked up, there was a blaze in his blue eyes. His shoulders were squared and his jaw was set. Vlad shook his head slightly at how fast Daniel had pushed all those emotions out of the picture. That couldn't be healthy for a child to do. "What do you want?" the boy demanded.

"You spent seventy years in the Fenton Thermos?"

"Yes," Daniel spat back. "Want to know what it's like?"

Vlad smiled and leaned back slightly. "Not particularly. I'd much rather know how much you know about the Ghost Zone."

"It's gone, I know that."

"No it's not," Vlad corrected. "The _ghosts_ are gone. Or, more accurately, the _old_ ghosts are gone. New ghosts are continually forming."

Daniel made a slicing motion with his hand. "Close enough." He hesitated, his forehead creasing. "But I was right, then? New ghosts are still showing up?"

"Yes. The device used to 'reformat' the Ghost Zone was actually a singular pulse that disrupted the ability of the ectoplasm to stick together. The ghosts melted back into the base plasma that had formed them in the first place. But it only worked on ghosts that it touched – any ghost formed after the pulse wouldn't suffer from its effects."

"What's your point?"

Vlad felt his smile twist into something a bit more real. He had really missed Daniel's bluntness and the excitement of the give-and-take of two rivals on opposite sides of a cause. "There are still ghosts out there. There are still natural portals. Those ghosts are still going to find you eventually."

Daniel crossed his arms over his chest and scowled, full of teenage bravado. "So? I could handle them before, I can handle them now."

"I'm sure you can," Vlad murmured.

"None of this answers the question of what you want," Daniel said. "I'm sure you're not chasing me down for my health."

"No, I'm not," Vlad agreed, getting to his feet and gazing into the earnest face of the young half-ghost. There was quite a bit of the story Daniel was missing – a story that Vlad would never tell him – and Vlad already knew the outcome of the question he was about to ask. Without experiencing all those years of loneliness, of living through the deaths of anyone who could be considered a 'friend', of being trapped when everyone else moved on… Daniel couldn't possibly comprehend the correct answer to the question.

And there was no way that the boy would ever know how much this one question meant to an old hermit.

Vlad took a slight breath and tipped his head to the side, making sure to narrow his eyes in the way his younger self would have all those decades earlier. He carried an air of diffidence, of confidence, of being the ruler of the entire universe. None of which was true, not anymore. "I'm offering you a life."

The boy on the screen arched a skeptical eyebrow.

"A new name, a new future, your past erased more completely than your 'friends' could possibly accomplish. The funds to have a life here, the stability of a place to live free of the hang-ups your past." Vlad watched Daniel stiffen, the instantaneous 'never in a billion years' already forming on the boy's lips. "Samantha Madel, Jasmine Carter. They're not the people you remember. They've lived their entire lives, Daniel, and you're not a part of them anymore."

The quiet flicker of pain on Daniel's face told Vlad that he may have hit a bit of a nerve with that one. "How can you possibly rejoin a life that left you behind seven _decades_ ago? It's never going to work."

"If it works or not isn't your problem," Daniel said softly, his body tight and anger on his face. But he didn't leave. He just stood there and stared into the television screen.

Vlad pressed his lips together. Arguments fluttered through his mind like high-speed jets; each of them could be used to convince Daniel to come live with him. Not the least of which were the rumors he'd been hearing about a certain temporally-challenged ghost seen in California or the knowledge that Vlad was the only person in the world who had a chance of finding that strange map of the Ghost Zone – one which could lead Daniel to a portal that opened in a time closer to home.

However, the rumors came from dubious sources that never seemed to pan out and that ghostly map had probably gone the way of everything else in the Ghost Zone. While all of his arguments were true, they would, in all likelihood, lead nowhere. Empty promises. Pipe dreams. A means to the end of having Daniel come live with him.

Vlad, in a show of just how much seventy years had done to him, chose not to say any of them. "The offer's there, Daniel."

"Yeah, and what do you want in return?" Daniel shot back.

"Nothing," Vlad said honestly. "Come and live a new life with me, and that's it. No repayment. No doing anything for me, no experiments, no nothing."

Daniel waited a beat, seeming to stare him right in the eyes. Distrust and anger burned brightly enough inside the young teenager for Vlad to see it through the camera. "I think I'll pass."

Vlad nodded. "You can go, but my offer stays open."

There was a long moment of tense silence. "I thought you were going to tell me where you were," Daniel said, cocking an eyebrow at the screen, his fists tight against his sides.

Settling down on the bed, Vlad sighed and picked up the remote control. "I'm across the hall. Room 135." Simultaneously shutting off the TV, camera, and sound feeds, Vlad quietly waited for his young rival to arrive. After seventy years, Vlad wasn't at all confident he could win a straight-out fight against the teenager.

But Daniel never showed up.

* * *

Somewhere, a few miles outside of Amity Park, a streak of green cut through the air. Ectoplasm started to leak out of the rend in the fabric of reality, hissing into a noxious vapor the second it contact the rest world. Red eyes gleamed from beyond the portal, the glint of the battered Fenton Thermos being carried in clawed hands.

As a laugh of pure evilness echoed through the clearing, everything went silent.

It was into the stillness of death that Dark Dan Phantom stepped into the real world for the first time in nearly forty years.


	10. Chapter 10

Sam scowled when the headlights illuminated a familiar shape slouching down the sidewalk. His hands were stuffed into his pockets and his focus was clearly on his feet. "There he is," she said, pointing, her frustration boiling to the surface in her voice.

"He looks like he's been having a great day," her son muttered, pulling the car over. "Kinda like mine."

A light punch to his arm caused him to roll his eyes, but Sam barely noticed. Her window lowered and she stuck her head out to grill her newly-located target. "Where have you been?"

The boy flinched visibly before glancing over his shoulder to take in his pursuers. "Hey, Sam."

"It's been," she hesitated long enough to check the clock, "seven and a half _hours_! We're sick of driving around."

Danny shrugged and gazed at them, apparently not catching onto her unspoken desire for him to get in the car so she could go home. "So?"

Sam's teeth clenched a bit tighter. "Where've you been?"

"Don't want to talk about it," he said softly, his head dropping to stare at the ground again.

"You don't want to talk about it," Sam repeated, startled. A momentary flicker of pain went through her at that simple statement – Danny used to say that a lot, but never to _her._ Leaning out the window, she managed to snag the edge of his sleeve. "Come on, Danny, get in the car."

He shuffled a bit further away from her, releasing his shirt from her grasp. "I wanna walk," he said, turning around and continuing his way up the street.

Sam blinked in surprise at his distant manner, managing to lean a bit more out the window as she stared at her long-lost best friend. Something was very definitely up with him and a worm of worry worked its way into Sam's almost-ninety-year-old heart. "Danny?"

Without another word, Danny vanished from view.

"Mom," came the voice of her son after a moment when Sam didn't pull herself back into the car. She was staring at the empty sidewalk in dismay, waiting for Danny to reappear.

Finally she rearranged herself in her seat and refastened her seatbelt, a sad look on her face. "Time really does change things," she said softly, feeling the weight of their years apart settling onto her shoulders for the first time since they'd been reunited. Somewhere inside she'd known this was coming, but it saddened her that it was happening already.

"What do you mean?" Daniel asked, putting the car into drive and whirring back into the street.

She swallowed heavily, staring blankly out the window. "He's never said that to me before," she finally whispered. "And," she continued with a morose chuckle, "I always used to have this sense about where he was. Invisible or not, I could always find him – I could _see_ him in a way most people couldn't."

"You just did it again. You're the one who said to turn down this street."

"No." Sam shook her head, her eyes glistening with unshed tears. "That was random chance. I can't see him anymore." She sighed. "He's pulling away from me, just like he used to hide from everyone else when we were kids."

The silence from the driver's seat did nothing to assuage the pain that was eating into the old woman's heart. "He's sixteen," the blue-eyed man finally said, as if pointing out how young and inexperienced Danny was would somehow make everything better.

"Exactly," Sam said softly.

* * *

Danny made it to Sam's house in the darkest part of the night, long after Sam had been dropped off by her son. She was asleep in a chair in the living room, a quilt thrown over her body, her wrinkled face looking much older in the deep shadows caused by the moonlight. Danny hesitated on his way up the stairs, watching her for a long few moments with his hands stuffed into his pockets and a morose set to his body.

Finally he wrenched his eyes away and quietly went up the stairs to the room Sam had let him borrow. Bags from their shopping trip the day before were still on the ground, most of it still folded and packed with tags on it. "This isn't home either," he whispered, stepping past the bags to sink onto the unfamiliar bed. "And Vlad's right. That's not my Sam… or Jazz either."

He curled up around one of the pillows and lay there for the longest time, staring out the half-opened window at the moon. "I want to go home."

Tears leaked out of his eyes even though he wasn't truly crying. Homesickness was stirring so strongly in his stomach it was almost painful. Perhaps it said something about how hurt he was that he risked saying his next words aloud: "I wish I could go home."

But there was no Desiree and there were no wishes. There was no home anymore to go to. The slight buzz of happiness from finding Sam and Jazz was wearing off now that he saw the truth: they weren't really there either. It was just two strangers with seventy-year-old faded memories.

Eventually, he drifted into a lonely sleep by the light of the moon.

* * *

He woke up before Sam the next morning, his stomach complaining loudly enough to chase away any thought other than 'locate food'. After having skipped out on the lunch the day before and having spent supper unconscious in Vlad's hotel room, Danny figured it had every reason to grumble. He ended up in the spider-decorated kitchen, scanning the shelves for something that looked remotely interesting.

"Awesome," he whispered when he found the cereal he'd eaten yesterday – which wasn't his favorite ever but it was better than the oatmeal that populated the rest of Sam's breakfast food – and poured himself a large bowl. Milk went on top of the nearly overflowing cereal and a spoon was gently added before the entire, heaping creation was carried carefully to the table.

Settling down into the hard seat, Danny spooned the cereal greedily into his mouth, licking his lips and wiping off the occasional dribble of milk off his chin with his arm. He was most of the way through the bowl before his mind was finally able to settle onto something other than 'feed me'.

This was officially his sixth day in his new time period. Less than a week since he'd found himself orphaned, friendless, and lost. His hand hesitated on its way towards his mouth, the spoonful of milk dripping onto the table. He shook his head and banished the thought, forcing the cereal into his mouth and chewing. It didn't do any good to dwell on what couldn't be changed.

Instead, his mind sent him a picture of Vlad and startlingly clear memories of what the fruitloop had said to him the previous evening. Danny gritted his teeth, rolling his eyes a bit when he heard Vlad's voice whisper, "How can you possibly rejoin a life that left you behind seven _decades_ ago?"

"Leave me alone," he muttered darkly, fully aware that he was completely alone in the kitchen and that Vlad was miles away.

The thought wouldn't leave him alone, despite his demand. Danny's gaze swept the kitchen, hanging up on a few pictures of the life Sam had lived – and he hadn't. His old life was gone just as surely as Sam's teenage life wasn't going to come back.

He dropped his spoon into the almost-empty bowl and crossed his arms, sitting back in his chair with a faint scowl. "I hate it when Vlad's right." The sarcastic and angry set to his words belied just how much that admittance still stung.

His old life was over. He needed to find a new one and, more and more, Danny was coming to realize that new life wouldn't – _couldn't_ – have anything to do with Sam and Jazz.

Dumping his bowl into the sink, he slunk through the living room, pausing to glance at the old woman who used to be his best friend, then continued on up the stairs and into the room he'd been given. He'd located what looked like a TV remote earlier and he was determined to lose his troubles in some brainless television show. Now he only needed to find the TV.

* * *

Vlad Masters had no such trouble with televisions. Not only was the one in his hotel room one of the older, cheaper styles – one that actually had a physical screen rather than holograms over a projector – but he'd spent the greater part of two decades owning the business that had invented and marketed the latest holographic televisions. He seemed just as determined to lose himself in a TV show as Daniel that morning, but there was apparently nothing on that fit the bill.

"News, news, infomercial," he muttered, flipping through the channels with an annoyed growl, pausing to watch the 'greatest invention in vacuums since cyclone technology'. "You'd think they'd eventually pass a law to ban those things from the air."

"Yes, Sweetie," his personal hologram agreed, appearing to be lounging on the bed next to him. "Perhaps you could order a movie?"

Vlad scowled at the TV, flipping quickly through the next ten channels. "You need to watch a movie and I'm not in the mood to watch something."

The hologram arched an eyebrow. "I don't understand. If you don't want to watch something, why don't you turn off the television?"

"I don't want to," he said darkly, settling on a channel lost in commercials, waiting to see what the show as about. "There's got to be something on to watch."

Shaking its head, the hologram turned its head towards the TV screen in order to appear to be 'watching' and quietly set its system to start a daily diagnostic check and system backup. It didn't understand a lot of things Vlad did and it had long since determined that it wasn't worth trying to figure out. Its processors were better used in other ways.

"Daniel's still an idiot," Vlad suddenly said, the TV shutting off with a small _blip_. "After seventy years, he still acts just like his father."

"Didn't he spend those seventy years essentially stuck in stasis?" the hologram put in. "How was he supposed to change during that time?"

Vlad glowered at his hologram, a snarl in the back of his throat. "Why can't he see that he _can't_ be who he used to be?"

The hologram, who didn't have the programming to predict how adult humans would act – much less teenage ones – stayed quiet.

"I'm offering him _everything_, Maddie, and he doesn't want it. He doesn't appreciate anything that I want to do for him." Vlad's fingers gripped tightly at the covers on the bed, anger and frustration warring in his mind. "Just like he used to."

"Then let's just go home," the hologram interjected, tipping its head and smiling. "Matthew has seventy-three messages on his voicemail. One of which is that author trying to write that new biography on Vlad Masters – didn't you want to do that?"

Vlad ran a hand through his hair and sighed. "After all these years, Maddie…"

The hologram made a small leap in logic and determined that Vlad didn't want to leave, despite his frustration at the only thing keeping him in Amity Park. "Then shall I inform the hotel we'll be staying an extra few nights?"

* * *

Danny quietly looked up from the electronic device he'd been reading, glancing up at Sam. She'd insisted that he learn a bit of recent history and had handed him this thing she'd called a book – Danny figured it was more of a computer than a book – and had watched him read with a sad look on her face. That was, until she fell asleep.

A quick peek at the clock informed him that it was only two in the afternoon and he bit his lip. Gently setting down the computer, Danny studied his old friend for a long few seconds. Confident that she was asleep and not just faking it, he floated into the air and vanished through the ceiling, leaving her to take a nap in her chair.

It took only a moment for him to be something other than human and he burst through the roof, shooting up into the sky and twirling a few times. "Finally!" he said, stretching and feeling the warm sun beating down on his face. Setting a course towards downtown, Danny worked his way into the heart of his old town.

He drifted over Lancer Middle School – the name causing him to stop and read the plaque that told how the new school was named after one William Lancer, a teacher who had died defending his students in 2014 from an invasion of ghosts. Danny felt a brief spurt of guilt at not being there to save the old teacher, but then a small smile appeared on his face. "Not forgotten this time," he said, remembering the rather sad memorial Lancer had received during that first, fateful trip into the future.

The new mall was his next stop, wandering through the endless variety of stores with a curious eye. The technology stores were his favorites, trying out the holographic demo games and listening to the odd, screeching music the other teenagers in the store seemed to be enjoying. He even got to watch a demo of the latest in television technology in one of the hallway kiosks – a three dimensional holographic thing with strange, motion-activated controls that Danny thought made the demonstrator look stupid.

"It's not so bad," he muttered, licking an ice cream cone he'd purchased from one of the vendors. He'd worried a little that things would be so different that he'd be completely lost when he was on his own, but things weren't nearly as different as he'd thought they'd be. Sure, the technology had changed and some of the fashions were a little different, but the people were generally the same. Nobody had screamed and pointed at him, demanding to know what decade he was from.

When the ice cream was gone, so was he. The mall vanished behind him as he scouted out the rest of the city, marking down the locations of fast food restaurants and the movie theater in his mind. He flew past his old house, which still caused a flash of pain in his heart, and over the deserted lot that Sam used to call hers. Hesitating just a moment near the tree that he'd spent that awful night perched in, Danny knew where he was headed next.

There were two people he needed to talk to before he could even start putting his old life behind him.

It was a bit more crowded than usual – perhaps due to the fact that it was a Saturday and sunny. He was invisible as he dropped to the ground, his ghost side vanishing before he let himself drift into the visible realm, crouched in front of his parents' gravestones.

"Hey," he said, shifting into a sitting position and tracing their names with his eyes.

The warm, gently curving stones didn't answer.

"I know you can't hear me," he said, flushing a little at the thought of being seen talking to rocks, "but you remember how Dad used to come here and talk to his parents all the time? He told me once that it helped and…"

Danny shrugged and looked up at the sky, letting out a long breath. "I always thought it was kinda stupid and I know I made fun of you for it, but I… Look, it's not like I can talk to _you_, can I?" He crossed his arms and glanced around.

"Jazz told me about what happened after I disappeared," he said softly, "and how you guys acted. It wasn't your fault, you know, and I don't blame you for it. It's more my fault than anything. I never told you what happened to me and I know I should have." He snorted out a sigh. "If I would have known _this_ was going to happen, trust me, I would've told you."

He was silent for a second, thinking back on the hundreds of chances he'd had to tell his parents and stop this from happening. "I just wanted you to know I was out of the Thermos." He leaned forwards and lightly traced his mother's name, brushing a few pieces of grit away. "And you can stop worrying – if you were, anyways. I'm free and I found Jazz and Sam…"

He trailed off, feeling a rush of sadness and frustration. "Not that it really helps that I found them. They're really different from who they used to be and I'm the same. It's… just… not working." His hand fell from the gravestone and into his lap, his shoulders dropping.

"Mom, Dad, if I could, I'd go home in a heartbeat. There isn't anything in the universe that could stop me from walking up the steps and letting you know that I was okay. You had to live your whole lives not knowing what happened to me and now you'll never know, will you? I can't go back and fix it."

Silence stretched in the graveyard as Danny stared at the headstones with his parents' names cared into them. His mother's was slightly darker than his father's, little flecks of black rock sparkling in the sunlight like tiny black diamonds.

"Vlad told me," he said after a moment, "that the Ghost Zone's still there and those natural portals are still appearing." Eyes flickered towards his hands, then back up. "Did they tell you about Vlad? That he's like me? Apparently we age slower than normal – Vlad's still around." He laughed sourly. "The only person in the world who is still here just like I remember is _Vlad Masters_. It's like a nightmare."

"He did seem different though," Danny added softly. "Maybe…"

He shook his head, cutting off whatever he'd been thinking. Going down the line of 'maybe Vlad Masters isn't such a bad guy after all' wasn't a healthy way to be thinking. "Portals. I know they travel through space and time," his gaze trained down on his fingers, "and I know that it's entirely possible that there's a portal out there that starts in this time and opens in past."

"But without the Infimap, chances are I'm never going to find it – if it's even there."

The gravestones stood quietly, reassuringly waiting for Danny to continue. A bird sang from a nearby tree, reveling in the warm spring day, but Danny didn't look up.

"I'm not going to look for a portal." The view of his fingers was becoming more and more blurry. "The Infimap doesn't exist anymore and finding that portal – if I ever do – will take my whole life. Besides, if I ever got home, I'd be who-knows-how old." He let out a sad chuckle. "And trust me, the changing of age thing? It matters."

"I can spend my whole life desperately searching for something I probably won't ever find, or I can find a new life and maybe be happy someday." He blinked, looking up at his parents' headstones, his voice raspy. "Believe me, Mom, Dad, if I had a real chance I'd take it an instant. I'd be there."

He swallowed heavily. "I'm sorry," he whispered. "I'm not coming home. I'm never going to be able to tell you I'm okay. This is the best I can do."

"I'm not going to be Danny Fenton anymore. I can't be – not after all this time. I don't know who I'm going to be or where I'm going to end up or what I'm going to do, but I'm not going to forget you. I promise. You'll always be my parents, no matter what."

Tears tried to appear in his eyes, but Danny swiped them away and swallowed past the thickness in his throat. "I love you guys," he whispered, "and I hope, wherever you are, that you know that."

His hands came out to quietly touch both of the headstones, then pushed himself to his feet. "Bye, Mom. Bye, Dad."

Turning around to leave, he could have sworn he heard someone whisper, "It'll all be okay, Sweetheart," but when he turned around there was nothing there. But perhaps it was just the wind.


	11. Chapter 11

Dark Dan Phantom settled onto the ground, staring up at the sign that had momentarily captured his attention. "Amity Park," it read, "founded 1908. Still a great place to live!"

"Not for long," Dark Dan snorted, a small, feral grin slipping onto his face. He raised a hand, energy swirling into existence around him. The ectoblast sparked and jumped away from him, sizzled through the air, and left a smoking hole in the center of the large billboard. "Amity Park, I'm coming for you."

* * *

Danny slipped a bit of his supper into his mouth, ignoring the evening news playing in the background with just as much efficiency as he used to ignore school. Sam seemed much more interested, her chat hesitating now and then to focus on the holographic screen. "…Sanchez has officially announced her candidacy for Mayor of Amity Park…" the tiny newscasters bubbled happily.

As surreptitiously as possible, he reached down to pick a few more of the vegetables off his slice of pizza. He wasn't entire sure what Sam had thought piling them on as thick as she had and she'd definitely crossed the line at some point. Olives weren't that great all by themselves, much less when buried underneath layers of onions, peppers, and this strange blackish vegetable. He already had a stack of picked-off vegetables on his plate, but now it seemed doomed to grow.

"So, Danny," Sam said, turning her attention back to him once the show swirled to a commercial break, "do you have any ideas?"

"Ideas?" Danny parroted before his brain caught up with him. He'd been so focused on his pizza he'd forgotten what she had been talking to him about. "Oh, yeah. No."

She sighed. "Focus just a bit, Danny. This is important."

"Doesn't seem like it," he muttered, finally deeming his pizza worthy of eating. He took another bite and nodded to himself. That was more like it.

Sam blinked and sat up a bit straighter. "We're talking about the rest of your _life_, Danny. How can that not be important?"

Focusing on his pizza rather than his old friend, Danny shrugged. The honest answer to her question circled in his mind, but Danny wasn't nearly brave enough to say it out loud. Sam had done a lot for him these past few days and he didn't want to hurt her feelings.

_It doesn't matter what I think, _Danny's brain whispered mutinously, despite his better wishes_. You guys keep making the decisions for me that you think are 'best' without caring what I say and I don't see any reason why you won't just continue doing it. _Danny did his best to shove that thought into the back corner of his mind and tried to remind himself that Sam was doing her best to _help_. He didn't need to make it difficult by acting like a moody teenager.

When she huffed and scowled, he peeked up at her from underneath his bangs. She seemed hurt by his silence and Danny let out a slow breath, looking for something to say to make her feel better. She was... used to be his best friend, after all. He didn't want to see her hurt. "I've got to go to school, right?" he said. "It's not much of a choice."

"High school?"

"I'm sixteen," he said, taking another bite of his pizza. "That's where I fit."

"There's lots of alternative programs now," Sam said, watching him closely. "You could really do anything. Traditional high school, some sort of home program, vocational school, fast track programs…"

Danny silently chewed his pizza, tamping down a trickle of frustration. "I just… I don't know, Sam." He knew school was important, but it was one of the last things he wanted to think about right then. "I don't really want to go to school yet. Besides, it's July, isn't it? Can't I decide later?"

"I suppose," she answered softly, her attention momentarily being distracted by the news again, pictures of some far-off war flashing behind the lady reading the news.

Picking off one last vegetable – one of those slices of that black thing that had been missed on his earlier inspection – Danny took a huge bite of his pizza. _I really don't want to talk about this stuff_, he said to himself. He knew he wasn't going to get to go home and he knew that he couldn't spend forever sitting here, pretending it was still seventy years in the past. He had to deal with all of this stuff and he knew it.

But every step he took away from his old life felt like he was throwing away _everything_ he had.

"We could set you up in an apartment, if you want," Sam said once her news segment switched to something less interesting. "I… You can feel free to live here as long as you want, but there are lots of apartments out there if..." Something quivered in her voice when she spoke, but it was back to normal before Danny could quite identify what it was. "You could really live in any town in the world, and I guess I could understand if you'd want to move, but I'd like you to stay in Amity Park. At least for awhile."

Danny blinked and looked up from his pizza. "Move?" he asked in surprise. It hadn't ever crossed his mind. "Why would I want to move?"

He watched her relax. "I don't know. I thought maybe you'd want to get away from here."

Snorting, he shook his head. "This is my home." A smile flickered onto his face in response to the one that appeared on Sam's. The thought of just leaving, of starting over, of getting rid of every tie he had to the past caused his stomach to churn. Terror was a large part of it, followed by a tiny bit of quiet realization. Would he ever _really_ be able to have a new life if he held onto the ties of his past one?

He wasn't so sure he could.

Something must have crossed his face at the thought, because Sam leaned over and nudged his arm. "It'll be okay, Danny. We'll get this all figured out."

"Yeah," he said, forcing the lapsed smile back onto his face. Sam seemed to accept it, grinning at him and looking more like her old self than she had in awhile, but Danny just turned his attention back to his supper. He popped the last pieces into his mouth.

"I guess we can talk about it later," Sam finally said. "Until then, you can feel free to stay in that guest room as long as you want. It can be your room – it's not like I have many visitors. We could even paint it, if you want."

Danny nodded and let his eyes drift over to the holographic television. Decisions about his future were stacking up around him and Danny was busy resisting making them. He was sixteen; all he _should_ need to do is go home and crawl into bed after listening to his parents ramble on about some new theory. Nowhere in his mind did he think it was fair that he needed to think about and make decisions on all of these things.

And yes, a tiny voice in his brain was pointing out that only a few minutes earlier he had been grumbling about Sam and Jazz making all of his decisions for him. Danny shook his head to clear the thought and "…reports in of a _flying man_ over Amity Park..." trickled into his ears.

He focused on the TV, watching the newswoman excitedly take a piece of paper from off-screen and read it. "There have been numerous flipped vehicles and there are reports of minor injuries. Authorities are urging citizens to stay away from the northeast region of Amity Park until this is figured out. We're trying to get the live feed to work to show you-"

"We could get you a job. That might take your mind off things," Sam cut in, not listening to what was happening on the news.

Danny shot her a glance and shook his head before turning his attention back to the small TV. "This man is reported to have white hair, glowing eyes, and is wearing a black-and-white jumpsuit. If anyone has any information on this matter, they are urged to find a safe location and call us at…"

"What the…?" Danny breathed, picking up the remote and turning up the volume to drown out whatever Sam was saying. "That sounds like _me_!"

* * *

Jazz had just sunk into her favorite chair, a book sitting on the armrest next to her, when the phone rang. Her eyebrows furrowed in annoyance as she reached out and grabbed the headset. "Hello?"

"Mom!"

Instantly focused on the sound of her daughter's sharp voice, Jazz glanced down at the phone. "What's up, Sweetheart?"

"Are you watching the news?" The car's engine was audible in the background, Sarah's voice breathy and awed as the younger woman swerved through traffic.

"No…" Jazz reached for the remote to flip on the TV, but Sarah didn't wait.

"There's a flying _man_ in Amity Park – just like Grandpa used to talk about." The normal doubt-laced derision in her voice Sarah usually had when talking about ghosts was back, but it was tempered with fascination. "I've never seen anything like it. There's no jetpack or strings or anything. He can just… _hang there_."

Jazz arched an eyebrow. "Is it a ghost?"

"I've never seen a ghost," Sarah answered, then swore slightly as the sound of screeching wheels filled the phone. "Nobody knows how to drive around here. Idiot almost crashed right into me."

"What's he look like?"

There was a beat of silence before Sarah spoke. "He's got white hair, black and silver clothes, a cape…" she trailed off for a second. "Glowing like a nightlight. How's he doing that?"

Jazz's forehead wrinkled. "That sounds like Danny," she mused softly. "Sarah, is it my brother?"

"I don't-" her voice cut off, the sound of her taking a sharp breath echoing through the line. The terrified scream that filled the room lasted only a moment before the phone simply cut out.

"Sarah?" Jazz asked, looking down at the phone with wide eyes, her heart beating loudly in her chest as worry crashed through her mind. "Sarah!"

When there was no answer, Jazz pushed herself out of her chair and raced down the steps. Her feet caught at one point and she almost tripped, but she steadied herself and reached for the front door. "Grandma?" one of her grand kids asked, poking his head around the kitchen door. "What was that?"

"Stay here," she ordered, watching the boy blink in surprise at her gruff tone. "Keep everyone _in this house_, got me?"

The boy nodded faintly as Jazz pushed open the front door and vanished into the street. She took one look up at the empty sky – her eyes catching the smoke rising from the far corner of Amity Park – and grabbed the phone to call Sam's place.

* * *

Daniel Madel nearly fell out of his chair in surprise when screams echoed into the little pharmacy where he was working. His head jerked up, gazing out the large window. "What's going on?" an old man, the sole customer in the store, asked. "It's not ghosts, is it? I hated ghosts when I was a kid. Have I ever told you-"

"Why don't you have a seat, Kwan, sir, and I'll go have a look," Daniel interrupted, slipping out from behind the counter and heading towards the door. "I'm sure it's not ghosts. Maybe there's been some sort of accident…"

The door jingled merrily when he pushed it open and stepped out onto the street, his eyes widening at the sight outside his pharmacy. A ghost – an actual _ghost_ – was hovering about a block away. People were starting to abandon cars (many of which were on fire or flipped over) and were running, the fastest starting to push past him. Daniel forced his eyes away from the familiar-looking ghost and scanned the cars, wondering if anyone was trapped inside.

His sweeping gaze caught movement and Daniel hurried over, crouched down to avoid being seen by the ghost. "Sarah?" he whispered in surprise, gazing at the terrifying amount of blood covering the woman's head. She was moving rather feebly, her eyes unfocused, and she didn't respond to her name. "Sarah!"

She looked up at him this time, obviously confused. "Help," she rasped, her hands coming up to paw clumsily at the seatbelt.

"Come on," he said, trying to stay calm. He glanced up at the ghost, who was laughing loudly enough for the sound to send shivers down his spine, and crawled in through the broken window of the car. He reached out to cradle Sarah's head and shoulders. "I'm going to release the seatbelt on three, okay?"

A huge flash of green light washed through the car, sending the truck next to them flying through the air with a horrendous roar of flame. Daniel flinched and swallowed heavily. "One, two, three," he said, his voice trembling, and he clicked the button for the seatbelt. Sarah dropped into his arms, her body twisting painfully as she fell to the car's roof. She let out a groan of pain and then passed out.

"Great," Daniel hissed, taking a second to look out the window. The ghost was still hovering there, taking pot shots at cars and people. It was just a matter of time before this car was a ball of fire. He turned back to Sarah and grabbed her shoulders, backing as quickly as he could out of the car, dragging her along behind. Staying as crouched as he could, he managed to get her into his arms and – with one last fearful glance at the ghost – he hurried towards the pharmacy.

"Danny Phantom!" the ghost suddenly called out. "Come out, come out, wherever you are!"

The old man held open the door as Daniel hurried inside, setting Sarah down beside the counter. "Danny Phantom," Kwan whispered, shaking his head and coming over to sit down next to the unconscious woman. "He's been gone for decades."

"Yeah?" Daniel said, grabbing his first aid kit and trying to stop the flow of blood from Sarah's head with shaking hands. "He'd better hurry back. That ghost is doing some serious damage."

"The ghost looks a whole lot like Phantom used to," Kwan grumbled. "Give me that." He grabbed the thick piece of gauze from Daniel and held it firmly in place.

A car outside exploded, the force of it causing cracks in the pharmacy's front window. Both the men flinched a bit, staring outside. "Danny Phantom!" the ghost yelled, laughter echoing in its voice. "My esteemed effendi – I'm waiting for you. I know you're back!"

"Phantom's back?" Kwan said in surprise, but Daniel wasn't listening. His mind was far away, the familiar sounds clicking into a memory almost as old as he was. That laughter… it was the same he'd heard that night. That horrible night his mother had died almost forty years previously.

_"Did you think" the remembered voice hissed, "you could sneak away from me? I'm not going to let some clone of mine…"_

_His mother's scream of pain washed out whatever the voice had said next. "No! Get away from my son!"_

_Glowing, hate-filled eyes stared down at him, listening to him cry, and then came the horrible laughter. "Is this my son?"_

_"No! DANNY!"_

A brilliant flash of green light burned through the pharmacy, snapping Daniel back to reality, and he shivered, staring over his shoulder. "No," he whispered. "No, no, no, it can't be…"

Sam had rescued him – Sam had _destroyed_ the ghost that night. It had been too late for his mother, but Sam had been quick enough to save him. The ghost from his nightmares was gone. Dead. It couldn't be back.

His mother's murderer hadn't lived all of these years when she hadn't. That wasn't possible. That wasn't _fair!_

"What do you think you're doing?" Kwan asked.

Daniel hesitated. He'd gotten to his feet and was halfway around the counter, his hands curled up into tight fists. He was still shaking, but it wasn't from nerves anymore. "I'm…" he trailed off, shaking his head at the fury that was welling up inside of him. "I'm not waiting for some seventy-year-gone ghost to show up and save me."

It took only a moment to drag out the key that opened up a special cupboard and he pulled out an ancient-looking ectogun. He'd laughed when Sam had ordered him to have it with him – the ghosts were constantly reforming, who knew when they'd come back – and he'd almost tossed it into a garbage can long ago. Now he was glad he didn't.

He pressed a button, noting the almost-dead charge on the gun before getting to his feet. The ectogun whined in his hands. "Stay here."

* * *

Sam finally followed Danny's confused gaze, turning to watch the news. "…got the live feed going from a local traffic camera." The newscaster was gone from the screen, replaced by a picture of smoke and tangled cars.

"Oh my," Sam whispered, leaning forwards. "What's going on?"

A cold breeze rippled down her spine, but Sam was too focused on the panning video to notice. The camera panned over the destruction and then up into the sky where a tiny figure was floating. "We'll zoom in as much as we can," a man's voice prompted, "but this isn't a very good camera. I'm not sure how good of quality we'll get."

"It's a ghost," Sam breathed.

The camera started to narrow in on the figure, slowly bringing it – him – into focus. "Our latest reports say this is might be a ghost. We've got a few phone calls in from locals stating that he looks a lot like the old pictures of Danny Phantom from seventy years ago. If this really is our local hero come back, it looks like he went through a bit of a personality change."

The fork fell out of Sam's hands. "Phantom?" she muttered as the image stabilized enough for her to make out the picture. "No…" She squinted, noting the flaming hair and the odd-looking cape. It struck a chord inside of her, but she couldn't remember where she'd seen it before. Something, seventy years ago, that meant a lot to Danny.

"Danny-" she turned to ask her young friend – surely he remembered who this ghost impersonator was – but there was nobody there.

She was still staring at the empty seat when the phone rang, Jazz's terrified voice on the other end.


	12. Chapter 12

Danny screamed through the air, his white hair whipping in his ears and his eyes watering in pain. "No, no, no, no, no," he muttered, homing in on the ghost. With the complete lack of ghosts in Amity Park, Dark Dan was like a lighthouse – visible for miles with Danny's ghost sense. Even with buildings in between them, Danny could tell exactly where the ghost was.

Pillars of smoke stained the sunset black and faint screams rose over the wind in his ears. Danny hesitated for a moment just on the other side of a building, taking a deep breath before turning himself intangible and racing straight through the vacant office building. He burst through the other side and into a scene of death and chaos, his eyes wide and scanning desperately for the source of the disaster.

Bodies were strewn on the ground, flames leapt from cars and buildings, and broken glass and bricks littered the street. Danny took in the too-still bodies with a shiver of dread and kept his eyes moving, searching. "It can't be," he whispered, his eyes traveling up the buildings to gaze into the sky, still not seeing the source of all the destruction.

He pushed away from the building, floating into the air, just as the wind blew a wave of smoke over him. He coughed, his arm coming up to try to block the stinging smoke from entering into his lungs and his eyes, when he saw movement on the street.

Danny dropped under the smoke, squinting down as Sam's son crawled out of the shattered window of a shop below him and made his way down the street, a strange-looking weapon in his hands. Danny watched for a moment, then moved in the same direction. "Where…?"

Then he was there.

Flames of white poured around the older ghost's head and insane eyes blazed from a familiar face. But the cheeks were sunken and shallow, his clothes hanging onto a frame that was more lean than muscular. Energy sprang into existence and the ghost sent it blasting towards a random car, laughing under his breath.

"No," Danny whispered, his mind filled with terrifying images of what had happened last time this ghost had gotten loose. His parents dying, his friends dying, everything being destroyed… _How can it be? All the ghosts died when the ghost zone was destroyed forty years ago. There's no way he could have survived that!_

Dark Dan Phantom turned slightly and a crooked grin grew across his face. "Finally!" he snarled, pointing towards Danny. Energy swirled around the ghost, coalescing in Dark Phantom's hand. "I'm going to destroy you for good this time."

Danny's eyes widened, back-pedaling slightly in the air, his brain still momentarily paralyzed by memories of a time stream that never really existed. Dark Dan's energy blast built up the correct level and he aimed it towards Danny, his grin turning into a fierce snarl.

Suddenly a brilliant blast of emerald energy swirled through the air and slammed into the destructive ghost, throwing off the ghost's aim long enough for the blast to miss Danny by inches. Danny flinched, then scowled, his eyes narrowing in determination. "Get your head in the game, Fenton," he muttered. He took in a deep breath, tried to ignore the fact that if that blast would've hit him he would have been nothing but a smear on the pavement, and focused on the ghost of his nightmares.

The ghost had crashed into the third story of an old building, creating a nice hole in the red bricks. He was pushing himself out of the hole, his hair flaring brilliantly as he scanned the roadways for the source of the blast.

"Daniel," Danny whispered, his head snapping around to find where Sam's son had been hiding. The man was crouched behind a half-melted car, the ecto-weapon in his hands still smoking from the first blast. The gun aimed again and another too-bright blast of light screamed through the air and sent Dark Dan crashing back into the building.

Danny dropped through the air, landing next to his 'nephew'. "What are you doing?" he hissed.

Daniel's face was set in fury. "Killing the thing that killed my mother." The man checked the battery level on his weapon and aimed it again at the hole in the building. "Either help or get out of the way."

"You can't beat him!" Danny glanced from Daniel to the building Dark Dan was trapped inside. "I can't beat him."

"She was your cousin. Or sister. Or something," Daniel said angrily, turning to stare at Danny. The man's eyes were cold and hard. "You're just going to let her murderer destroy this town?"

"No." Danny looked up at the building, watching the pile of bricks start to move as Dark Dan pushed himself to his feet and brushed the dust from his jumpsuit. "But trust me: we can't beat him this way. How many shots do you have left?"

"One, maybe."

Danny shot the man a glance, shaking his head. "We need…" He trailed off, a bit lost. He had been about to say that he needed Tucker, Sam, Jazz, and his parents. But Tucker was long dead. Sam and Jazz were old and had probably forgotten most of what they had painstakingly figured out seventy years previously. And his parents weren't going to be able to do anything from the grave.

It was him and Daniel, only Daniel had zero experience fighting even the smallest forms of ghosts. He apparently had a pretty good eye for shooting things, but one last shot wasn't going to do either of them any good. If his powers were what he'd said they were – essentially none – he was going to be more of a distraction than anything else as soon as that last shot was gone.

Danny was on his own.

"What do we need?" Daniel asked, his eyes narrowing as Dark Dan scowled down at them.

"A plan," Danny finally finished, his brain working overtime. "A better plan than this."

Dark Dan floated into the air, spreading his arms, gathering energy around him. "I can see you two down there! Is this some kind of family reunion?"

Danny swore softly and pulled energy around him, readying it to blast, setting his half-formed plan in motion. Step one: get rid of any distractions. "You need to get out of here."

"No way in Hell," Daniel answered, his eyes hard. "That thing killed my-"

"-mother," Danny cut in, not taking his eyes off of Dark Dan. "I get it. But you getting killed isn't going to help her any. Get out of here, get the innocent people safe, and get that weapon recharged."

A flare of light from the sky was all the warning Danny had before a brilliant blast of energy slashed through the air. He barely got a shield up in time, feeling the punch to his gut as it hit and his shield pulled energy from his body. Brushing off the momentary dizziness with long practice, Danny got to his feet and raised his hands, sending a flash of emerald light into the sky.

"Sam's got to have weapons stashed around someplace," Danny continued like he hadn't been interrupted. "I can't beat him on my own and neither can you. We need weapons, we need lots of them, and we need them _here_." He shot a glance towards his clone's child. "You want him dead, you need to go."

Daniel stared at him for a moment, then scowled and nodded. "Fine."

Danny dropped to a crouch, taking a deep breath. "I'll get him focused on me and you get to Sam." As soon as the man nodded, Danny flung himself into the air. Step two: distract and stall until a better plan develops.

He corkscrewed through the sky, his eyes focused on the glowing figure of his older self. "Hey, freak!" he called, sending another couple of blasts towards Dark Dan.

The ghost roared, his voice echoing with power, shattering any windows that had been left. Danny's ectoblasts vanished harmlessly in the air, the ghost's scream disrupting their power. Noting that new skill in the back of his mind, Danny narrowed his eyes and pushed himself up to level with Dark Dan.

"How are still alive?" Danny asked, pulling energy to his hands.

"You idiot," Dark Dan snorted, raising a careless hand and sending an ectoblast towards Danny that was easily twice as powerful as anything Danny could have done. "I'm a ghost; I'm not alive."

Danny dodged, refusing to allow the ghost to see how outclassed he was. The blast slammed into a building behind him, neatly vaporizing a ten-foot hole clean through the building. Danny licked his lips and settled himself in the air, watching Sam's son vanish out of the corner of his eye.

"If you're asking how I made it through the 'reformation'," Dark Dan continued conversationally, reaching behind him and pulling out a battered and cracked Fenton Thermos. His claws slid over the ancient device a few times, then he tossed it through the air towards Danny. "It's really all your doing. The blast that destroyed everything else never touched me. Made a nice hole in my prison though."

The sneer on Dark Dan's face almost made Danny's heart stop. Danny caught the thrown Thermos, unconsciously glancing down at the tiny confines exposed by the large crack running down the side.

Dark Dan laughed, jerking Danny's head back up. "It's kind of sad how those idiots in white were my saviors after all that time. But now I'm free. And nobody's going to stop me from destroying everything."

Danny's eyes narrowed, his teeth clenching. The Thermos tumbled from his hands, landing in a crunch of metal somewhere on the streets below.

"I'm," Dark Dan said slowly, his lips carefully forming each syllable, "_inevitable_."

The blast that flew from Danny's hands almost startled him with its intensity – pure fury made the energy around him glow brighter than normal, seething with power. "I'm not going to let you hurt anyone," Danny shouted.

Dark Dan batted the blast out of the way. "As if you can stop me," he said, chuckling darkly. "I've got _decades_ of experience on you this time."

* * *

Sam Manson's fingers were white as she pulled her car up to Jazz's house. The older woman was pacing back and forth on the sidewalk, her eyes jumping from the smoke staining the sky to the house where her grandkids were hiding, her hands clenching and unclenching by her sides.

"I can't get my daughter on the phone," Jazz said as soon as the window rolled down, worry clear in her voice. "Danny either."

"Danny vanished when he saw the news reports," Sam answered, shaking her head. "I think he recognized the ghost that's attacking. He's there; he has to be."

Jazz wrung her hands. "I don't get it, how could there be a ghost after all this time? The ghost zone was destroyed – there are no ghosts anymore."

"It doesn't matter, whoever it is, its here now and we have to deal with it." Sam pushed the unlock button on the door, the locks clicking firmly. "Get in."

"I can't," Jazz said softly.

Sam looked up at her old friend, taking in the lines on her face, the frailness in her body, and the age in her eyes. Her own body was little better. "I know," Sam said softly. "I can't either. But that can't stop me from helping Danny."

"You've got the weapons?"

"Every single one," Sam answered, glancing towards the back seat. The piles of ancient technology – mostly charged and only somewhat dusty – made a haphazard mess from where they'd been tossed in place. Her hand drifted down to the brake. "You sure?"

"I need protect my grandchildren." Jazz reached through the window and picked up a small ectogun, checking the charge as if it hadn't been forty years since she'd last done that. "Go."

Sam nodded and, as soon as Jazz stepped back from the car, accelerated down the street. "I'm too old for this," she muttered.

* * *

Danny kicked out with his foot, catching his older, jerkier self in the stomach. The ghost grunted in pain, but it barely slowed the ghost's movements. Danny felt Dark Dan grab his ankle, tipping him upside down. As the world spun and Danny struggled to keep his sense of 'up' and 'down', he gathered a blast of energy between his palms and blasted it – point blank – into Dark Dan's belly button.

The older ghost simply phased his body out of existence for a moment, the blast passing through without any damage. "Nice try," Dark Dan chuckled.

Danny was panting by this point, dredging up stray bits of energy anywhere he could find it. He pulled it all in, swirled it around in his chest for a moment, and released it all at once. The wave of power slammed into Dan's fingers, forcing the ghost to release him.

Dropping through the sky, Danny let himself fall quite a few feet before he stopped himself, twisting over to stare up at the Dark Dan. "I'm not done yet," Danny snapped.

"Of course you're not," Dark Dan muttered, "you're not smart enough to know when to stop." The ghost snapped his fingers and the sound _reverberated_ around the entire city. Danny's hands flew to his head, his eyes closing in pain at the sharp noise. "You're like a fly. Annoying, but ultimately doomed."

_How's he doing that?_ Danny thought desperately when he worked his watering eyes open, his ears still ringing. A deep breath slid into his chest and Danny raised his arms over his head. Energy swirled and flew, only to be blocked by Dark Dan's shield.

"I have forty _years_ of practice since the last time we met," the ghost said darkly, "and you expect a simple ectoblast to defeat me? I heard you spent the past seventy years in a Thermos. I thought it was a fitting place for you."

Danny glared up at Dark Dan, his fingers clenching into fists. His brain was starting to feel watery from all the energy he'd used, his muscles beginning to tremble. _I need a plan and I needed it five minutes ago._

"Do you know what I'm going to do to you?" Dark Dan chuckled. "Did those annoying friends of ours tell you what I did to our clone?"

Danny shook his head, narrowing his eyes. _There's got to be a weakness somewhere. A move he can't counter._

"When those idiots in white destroyed the ghost zone – _my _kingdom – and set me free, I tried to find you. Surprise, surprise that you weren't around. But I found our little clone. Danielle. Quite a fitting name for a rather pretty girl."

Danny snarled softly under his breath, readying another blast of energy. Dark Dan snorted and sent a backhanded wave, a wall of energy swirling through the air. Danny barely had time to raise a faltering ghost shield before it hit and drained him of even more energy.

"She had a little baby boy. Such a beautiful child."

Breathing heavily and looking around for something to help him defeat this ghost, Danny's eyes caught on movement in the street. Daniel was helping some people out of a building – an older man and some unconscious woman. Daniel looked up, Danny momentarily catching his gaze.

"I did the most wonderful things to our clone," Dark Dan laughed. "How she screamed and pleaded with me for her life and for the life of her child before she died. You should have heard the sound of her neck break."

On the ground, Daniel was still standing still, staring up into the sky. Danny could tell from the darkening expression on the man's face that he could hear every word. _Get those two people out of here!_ Danny wanted to scream at him. _Stop listening and run!_

"I broke her neck so carefully. She didn't die from it – she just couldn't move anymore. She had to watch as I slowly took out her intestines and her stomach." The ghost was sneering, cruel delight dripping from every syllable. "She died very slowly, very painfully, knowing with every breath that once she died I'd do the same thing to her precious child."

Danny wrenched his eyes off of the man on the ground listening to the story of his mother's death, focusing on the ghost floating above his head. His fingers curled into fists by his sides, his heart clenching in fury.

"If _he_ hadn't shown up, that child would be long dead," the ghost snarled. "But nothing's going to stop me from doing the same thing to you. And then to everyone you've ever held dear."

"I'm not going to let you hurt anyone!" Danny glared up at Dark Dan, his entire body trembling in anger. Blue flared in his eyes, frozen tendrils reaching up from the core of his body and making his fingers sting. "_EVER_!" An icy blast slammed upwards, catching the ghost by surprise.

A coat of ice surrounded the older ghost, freezing the expression of anger in place, and Dark Dan tumbled towards the ground.

Danny, screaming in fury, followed, energy dancing around him.

* * *

Sam watched the ghost fall from the sky, her heart jumping into her chest when she spotted Danny's smaller figure dropping towards the street. "Danny!" she yelped, stomping on the brake and staring up at the sky. It wasn't until she saw a flare of light from Danny and he pulled out of his dive that her heart continued beating. "Be careful."

She carefully applied the gas again, working her way between the stopped vehicles blocking the road. Seventy years ago, she would have ditched the car and carried her weapons at a sprint, but not anymore. She had no illusions about how far she'd be able to tote the arsenal in her back seat and still be able to help.

One eye on the figure floating in the sky and the other on the cars, she completely missed her son stumbling down the sidewalk until he called out. "Mom!"

The car stopped once again, this time Sam getting out. She gasped at the blood smeared down the front of her son's shirt, hurrying around to help him with the woman he was trying to carry. "Are you okay, Danny?" she said, pulling open the side door so he could set the woman inside. "Sarah!" Sam gasped, finally catching sight of the woman's bloody face.

"I'm fine, all this blood is hers," Daniel said, panting a bit. "She needs a doctor." He opened his mouth to continue, but caught sight of the mess of weapons in the back seat. "Wow."

"I'm going to help Danny," Sam said quickly, opening up the back door and pulling the weapons out of the car. "You drive Sarah to her house – Jazz should know how to help her." She yanked on a few of the guns, finding them wedged into place. "Help me!" she snapped over her shoulder.

Daniel pulled her out of the way and got to work on the weapons in the back of the small car, handing them out one at a time. "The ghost…" he hesitated, then swallowed. "Mom, the ghost is the one that killed Danielle."

Sam blinked at him, catching the odd warble in his voice. "We never proved that a ghost killed your mother, Danny," she said softly.

"_One did_," Daniel snapped. "And he's back!" When he grabbed the next weapon, Sam saw that his knuckles were white. "And you _know_ it's a ghost – you're the one who chased him off the first time."

"No I didn't, Danny," Sam said. "We've been over this. Whoever killed Danielle was gone before I got there, along with whoever chased off her murderer. All I ever saw was the text message she sent." She reached out and touched his shoulder, feeling him trembling with anger. "Take a breath, Danny."

Her son did, his shoulders moving as his lungs expanded. "He's back," Daniel said, his voice thick with fear and anger, "and he's going to finish the job he started. Then he's going to kill you too."

"No, he's not," Sam said. "Hand me those last two weapons." As Daniel reached into the car to grab them, Sam continued. "I'm going to stop this ghost, whoever it is, and we're going to have pizza for supper." She took the weapons and set them on top of the pile.

"If I were half the ghost Danielle was-"

"Stop it." Sam cut off her son, pulling him out of the car and turning him to face her. "Stop trying to measure yourself against someone you don't remember."

"But-"

"Get in car. Drive Sarah to Jazz. You need to protect her."

Daniel looked up as a huge blast of light made them squint and flinch. A rumbling roar grumbled down the street as a building collapsed a block away. "I'm not leaving you here."

"You don't know what you're doing," Sam informed him. "I do. Get in that car, Daniel Madel, and get out of here before I kill you myself." She turned around and picked up the nearest ectoweapon, checking the charge and brushing off a layer of dust.

The old man who had been following Daniel and lingering in the shadows stepped forwards. "Still chasing Phantom around Sam?"

Sam shot Kwan a grin and gathered as many weapons as she could carry in her hands, slinging the strap of a battered Fenton Thermos around her neck. "Always."

"Mind if I catch a lift?" the man asked Daniel, reaching for the door without waiting for a reply. "I used to be a doctor, you know."

There was silence for a moment, then the sound of a car door shutting as Kwan settled himself into place. "I'm coming back," Daniel finally said

"Of course you are," Sam said, a smile twitching at her mouth as she headed up the street at a limping run. "You're related to Danny Fenton. I wouldn't expect anything else."

* * *

Just a ways down the street, perched on top of the hotel they'd been staying in, Vlad Masters and his hologram watched the fight. A slight frown crossed his face and he leaned forwards, weaving his fingers together under his chin. "Who is this ghost?" he whispered.

"Do you think the boy's going to win?" the hologram asked, 'sitting' down on the rooftop air conditioner next to its master.

"I doubt it," he answered. "Daniel is quite outmatched this time." Wrinkles appeared on his forehead and his eyes crinkled in thought.

"Are you going to go help him?"

Vlad remained silent, a finger coming up to tap against his lips. Then he glanced over at his hologram and turned it off with a flick of his finger, leaving Vlad alone on the rooftop. "I haven't decided yet," he said softly, turning back to watch the struggle and debate which was better: the rest of his life knowing Daniel was alive but hated him and wanted nothing to do with him, or the rest of his life knowing Daniel was dead and he was truly alone.


	13. Chapter 13

Danny landed on the ground, panting, gazing into the crater his evil, alternate self had created. "Had enough?" he said. He stood up straight, struggling to keep his legs from shaking. He'd used too much energy too quickly – he'd have to be more careful.

"Ice powers," Dark Dan Phantom growled, shaking a layer of ice off his back and getting back to his feet. "How quaint." The ghost picked a piece of ice off his arm. "Seems like a powerful thing for such a weak half-ghost to do. I doubt you'd be able to do that again."

Danny glared at the bright red eyes of the ghost that had killed his clone. He brought his arms up, blue flaring in his eyes and cold energy cascading down his arms. "I can do this all night," he snapped, sending a bolt of freezing power towards Dark Phantom with the intent of turning him into an iceberg.

It didn't take more than an instant for Danny to realize he'd done just the wrong thing. The ghost smirked, somehow catching the blue energy and deflecting it towards a half-burned car, and then shot towards Danny. Danny raised his hands, struggling to put together another attack, but Dark Phantom was just _there_.

Claws racked down Danny's raised arm, drawing a scream of pain. The huge rips in his arm burned like fire, bloody ectoplasm pouring to the ground, his eyes flooding with involuntary tears of pain. Danny backpedaled, holding his bloody arm close. His other arm came up, a spark of a shield forming to push the ghost away.

He was too late. Dark Phantom ducked under the forming shield, his green-covered claws slicing across Danny's chest. Danny flinched, shut his eyes, sent an unconscious blast of energy towards the thing hurting him and, finally, connected with something. The ghost was shoved backwards and out of reach.

"What a pathetic thing," the ghost laughed, twisting his voice into a mockery of Danny's father. "Lesson number one in ghost hunting: a big attack means the ghost is vulnerable for a second afterwards."

Danny pried his eyes open and glared at the dark shadow of himself. "Don't," he hissed, his teeth clenched in pain.

"Don't what?" the ghost snorted, a smile dancing on his face. "Don't stop?"

Danny growled under his breath, his eyes glowing brilliantly green, anger bubbling in his mind and causing his fingers to curl into fists.

"Too weak to save your family and your friends all those years ago," Dark Phantom says softly, his eyes glittering with delight. "And too helpless to protect what's left now."

With a snarl of fury, Danny launched himself towards the ghost, energy fizzling around him. Dark Phantom sidestepped the attack, a fist coming down to slam into Danny's back. Danny's breath flooded out of his lungs in a wheeze and sent him tumbling to the ground. The cuts on his chest and arm burned when they hit the dirt and the power he'd collected vanished as he struggled to get a breath of air.

"You want to know who trapped you in that Thermos?" the ghost said softly, his breath tickling Danny's ear.

Danny finally pulled some air into his lungs and pushed himself to his hands and feet, his mind intent on destroying this demented version of himself. A cold foot slammed into his back and pinned him to the ground, Danny hissing in pain.

"_The Box Ghost_," Dark Phantom continued like nothing had happened, his voice filled with glee. "Can you imagine – the Box Ghost is the one who ruined your life. Of all the powerful enemies you made, that pathetic excuse for ectoplasm is the one who got the better of you for seventy years."

Energy flared around Danny, desperately searching for a way past the ghost's defenses, but nothing worked. Each blast of power was met by one from Dark Phantom, leaving Danny panting and feeling weaker than ever.

"I know a secret," the ghost whispered. "You promise not to live long enough to tell anyone?" The ghost laughed loudly before his voice dropped back to a whisper. "That pathetic ghost was going to let you go. If the reformatting wouldn't have happened, you would have been freed to see your parents, your friends, before they were old and wrinkled and _dead_. So you realize who's really to blame for you being so alone: your own kind. Those idiot Guys in White."

Danny twisted his head to glare up at Dark Phantom, green eyes meeting red. "I don't care," Danny muttered.

The pressure on Danny's spine lifted, the ghost removing his foot to back away and tip his head in confusion. "What?"

"I don't care." Danny grunted with effort as he got to his feet, swaying slightly, his head spinning from the blood he'd lost. He held his mutilated arm close to his chest, spread his feet to give him balance, and poured all his anger and loneliness and desperation into the energy that was cascading around his hand. "It's the one thing I've learned about time: the past is the past and you can't change it. So I really don't care."

The blast of emerald power sliced through the air, Danny's legs feeling like limp spaghetti for a few heartbeats at the sudden energy drain. Dark Phantom didn't duck in time; the energy slammed right into his face. Danny watched in vindictive pleasure as the ghost collapsed to the ground for a second, his body steaming.

"But I do," the ghost snarled as he slowly rose into the air. "I do care. The past is what matters and I'm not going to give up until I correct the _mistake_ that happened all those years ago.

"What mistake?" Danny asked, tensing and raising a hand, waiting for the attack he knew was coming.

"You beating me last time." The words were almost lost in the feral snarl of the ghost as he leapt towards Danny. Dazzling blood-red energy slammed into brilliant green and Dark Phantom snaked out his hand.

Danny grunted in pain, feeling an odd and very wrong sensation in his stomach. He blinked at his ghostly counterpart as pain started to curl around his brain, chewing into the edges of his vision. His mouth moved a few times, his mind trying to formulate a question and failing, his body struggling to remember how to breathe. Finally, he looked down.

Dark Phantom's clawed hand was inside Danny's abdomen, greenish blood leaking from around the ghost's wrist. "Isn't this nice?" the ghost hissed, his mouth inches from Danny's ear. "I believe this is how your clone died."

* * *

Sam panted for breath as she lugged her load of weapons up the street. Eighty-five years of living had done irreparable damage to her body despite years of training to help prevent it. She was in excellent shape for someone of her age, but her muscles were nonetheless weakened, her bones brittle, and her senses dulled. Only a few decades earlier, she would have been able to carry twice as much at a dead sprint. Now she was barely moving at a jog with what amounted to a pathetic excuse for an arsenal in her arms.

She'd lost sight of the fight when it had taken to the street and she was struggling to locate her long-lost friend. Her teeth were grinding against each other in panic, her heart pounding loudly from her throat. _He's just a child_, her mind whispered as her eyes searched for any sign of where the two combatants were, _he shouldn't be doing this_.

A flare of light from a block away caught her attention and Sam changed course, remembering from her teenage years hunting ghosts with Danny that eerie lights usually equated to supernatural presences. "Danny," she panted. "Don't get hurt."

When she finally got close enough for her eyes to pick out what was happening, the weapons tumbled from her arms in horror. Danny was covered in blood, his face pale and his body shaking. The ghost was pulling its hand out from Danny's stomach, greenish blood gushing from the wound left behind.

"NO!" she whispered, panic causing her hands to tremble as she ducked down and grabbed the first weapon she could find. The gun – which was a bit too heavy for her to aim correctly – whined as she pointed it in the general vicinity of the two ghosts and started to pull the trigger. She hesitated for a moment when she noticed how much the barrel of the gun was wavering, worried she'd hit the wrong thing, but when Danny collapsed to the ground her finger clenched on the trigger involuntarily.

The kick from the blast sent Sam sprawling backwards on the pavement. When she got back onto her hands and knees, she looked up to see what damage she'd done, her stomach in her throat in worry that she'd just killed her friend.

Danny was still on the ground, the ghost crumpled into a pile a fair distance away. "I hit him!" Sam whispered delightedly, grabbing another weapon from the pile as she pushed herself to her feet. "I'll just keep shooting-"

She stopped talking when a red-glowing shadow fell over her. Sam looked up, blood draining from her face when she saw the ghost snarling at her from only a few feet away. "I remember you," he growled.

"Funny," Sam found herself saying, her mouth dry, "I don't remember you."

"I'm just a bad dream, a timeline that never happened but should have," the ghost hissed.

Sam stared at the ghost in confusion, her eyes catching on the emblem blazed onto the ghost's chest and her eyebrows knitting together.

"Still don't remember me, huh?"

Sam shook her head, the tiniest of memories struggling to unbury itself after seventy years. Something Danny had been afraid of, some nightmare he insisted had really happened, something about a future that he wouldn't let happen…

"Well, you're not going to live long enough to care," the ghost simply said.

Sam stared at the ghost as a lethal amount of power flooded around him. Her fingers clenched around the small gun in her hand, but she knew she'd never be able to raise it and fire in time – not at her age. She tried anyways.

* * *

Danny couldn't get a full breath into his lungs. His stomach kept clenching in pure agony, his chest shrieking in pain whenever his body moved. Spots of light dance in his eyes as he shifted, pressing a hand over the wound in his abdomen. His eyes closed tightly in pain, biting his tongue to keep from screaming, and then he levered himself to his feet.

The world spun, darkness fighting with the motes of light in front of him, but Danny managed to stay on his feet. Dark Phantom's voice chewed at the edges of his consciousness and Danny turned towards it, blinking a few times to clear his eyes.

"Sam?" he breathed, the name cutting off short as a blast of pain sliced into his brain at how his stomach had to move in order to speak. "NO!" His good arm reached out towards her as energy built around the ghost, knowing that he couldn't get there in time to save his old friend's life. _No... not Sam!_

The world seemed to move oddly, blacking out and stretching, something Danny completely attributed to blood loss until he blinked and realized that Dark Phantom was somehow standing right in front of him. Without time to stop and figure out what happened, Danny raised a hand and formed a shield – smaller than usual but powerful enough to stop an attack at this range. The shield shattered painfully when Dark Phantom's blast slammed into it, sending Danny stumbled backwards into Sam and knocking her gun from her hand.

"Danny," he heard her gasp, catching him and holding him up.

"Get out of here," he whispered, struggling to find his balance and keep himself upright without help.

"Teleporting?" an evil voice cut in, the ghost arching an eyebrow in surprise. "You learned a lot more in those months you were free than I gave you credit for."

Sam held onto his shoulders. "You can't win on your own. I can help."

His whole body trembling with effort, Danny shrugged off her arms, swallowing down a moan of pain at the movement. "No, you can't. Get out of here."

"Ah well," the ghost muttered, seemingly ignoring the two friends' conversation. "Teleport away from this."

Danny looked up at the ghost as Dark Phantom's body blurred and stretched, forming into multiple copies of the ghost from his nightmares. Danny swore softly under his breath, taking a small step backwards as four identical copies of a particularly evil smile solidified before him. "Sam, get out of here."

"No," she whispered. She moved, pulling the Thermos's strap over around her head and holding it tightly in her hand. "I can't let you-"

Two of the Dark Phantoms moved, reaching out and grabbing each of Sam's hands. The Thermos tumbled from her grasp and her eyes widened, gasping in pain as the two Phantoms began to pull in opposite directions.

"SAM!" Danny shouted, raising his arm and sending blasts of power towards the two copies. His legs turned to water and the world spun dizzily before his eyes as he drained his body of even more energy.

The two ghosts let go, dodging the attacks and chuckling, their eyes glittering as they watched Danny struggle to stay upright. "You can't win. You can't beat me."

Danny ignored them, focusing on Sam's wrinkled face, her pale skin and wide, frightened eyes making her seem older than ever. She wasn't ready for this, not anymore. _She doesn't remember what it's like_, he whispered to himself. _It was too long ago. She doesn't remember how violent ghost hunting can be. _"Sam…"

She shook her head, stooping to pick up the weapon that had fallen from her grasp when Danny stumbled into her.

_I've got to get her out of here_. Danny stared at her, the four ghosts circling around them a distant worry compared to saving his old friend's life. "You're too old," he said, his eyes boring into hers. "You're too weak. You're not-" He cut off, shaking his head, but forced himself to continue. "You're not Sam Manson anymore. You're Mrs. Madel."

Danny ignored the stunned look on Sam's face as he stumbled forwards, turning her around and pushing her away from him, leaving bloody handprints on the back of her shirt. "I'm going to distract the ghost and you're going to leave," he ordered. He watched her glance over her shoulder at him,but her feet were still moving in the right direction – away.

"Enough talking," the ghost suddenly snapped.

Danny twisted around, barely catching sight of the fist in time to duck. He felt it glance off the top of his skull, making the world fizzle out of focus for a heartbeat, and he sliced out with his foot. Catching one of the copies of the ghost right in the stomach, Danny unleashed enough energy into the copy to do two things: destroy one of the copies and keep the attention of the other three on himself.

_I'm going to protect Sam_. His teeth clenched, swallowing down the pain rocketing through every nerve of his body with even the slightest movement. Energy grew between his hands, sending jolts of static up into his brain, and he tossed it into the air. It caught another of the copies in the back, the ghost dissolving into motes of energy. _And I'm going to protect this town_.

His good arm reached down and snagged the Thermos off the ground, looping the strap over his arm. "Splitting yourself four ways wasn't a good plan," he shouted to the two ghosts floating in the air, then launched himself up to join them.

Blood poured down his front from the slices in his chest and the hole in his stomach. One of his arms was essentially useless, ripped open from shoulder to elbow by his evil counterpart's claws. His lungs still wouldn't take in a full breath of air. Agony was making the world spin and continued to chew away at his vision; already dark bands of nothing had swallowed everything but what was right in front of him.

He couldn't spare the time to take his eyes off of Dark Phantom – he could do nothing but hope that Sam was getting as far away as she could. _I'm not going to last much longer_, he thought desperately, sending a blast of power towards the nearest copy. The ghost dodged. _This plan had better work_. _I'm only going to have one shot at it._

The copy he hadn't been paying enough attention to suddenly appeared in front of him, a fist slamming straight into Danny's nose. His nose shattered was an incredibly loud _crack_ inside of Danny's head.

"You can't win," the ghost snarled as Danny tumbled from the air, his watering eyes stealing his vision and the blood gushing from his broken nose clogging his throat. "Why are you even trying?"

Wiping the tears from his eyes and spitting out a mouthful of blood, Danny pushed himself back into the air. Power curled up from his toes, slicing over his body with an agonizing tingle, and rushed out through his outstretched hand. The glowing ball of energy slammed into the last copy, dissolving it.

Danny had only a moment to celebrate the minor victory before a cold hand clasped his ankle and jerked him to a stop. A scream of pain worked its way out of his lips, and he coughed and trembled in agony, struggling to breath while being held upside down.

"You look truly awful," the ghost said, his voice not sounding at all tired. "I almost wish I had a mirror."

Danny blinked through the blood dripping into his eyes, glaring at the red orbs only a few feet away. He raised his arm, trying to pull in enough energy for a last blast.

Dark Phantom snorted in derision and tossed Danny into the air. The ghost spun, landing a hard kick right into the bloody mess that remained of Danny's stomach.

The world went dark. Danny blinked his eyes open, surprised to find himself on the ground, his heart struggling to keep beating. He turned his head to the side, catching sight of the Thermos lying next to his hand. _I have to catch him…_

He reached for the Thermos, feeling his body shrieking in pain at even that small of a movement. His bloody, slippery fingers catch on the Thermos – and it slipped out of his fingers and rolled just out of reach. "No…"

A blast of power whirled out of the sky and slammed into his chest. Danny would have shrieked in pain, no longer able to hold back and no longer having the energy to protect himself from the spectral onslaught, but his battered body didn't have enough air to scream with. All he could do was writhe on the ground in agony.

When the world finally righted itself and he was able to see again, Danny blinked up into the eyes of Dark Dan Phantom. The ghost was grinning down at him. "This was fun," the ghost murmured, "but now you die."

* * *

Vlad Masters, on his perch several blocks away, pushed himself to his feet. His hands clenched into fists by his side, knuckles white, muscles straining. "Daniel…" he whispered, pacing towards the end of the building.

He stopped just before his feet would have gone over the edge. There he waited, one beat, two beats, three, four… all the time, watching Daniel lose. All the time knowing that when the boy lost, Vlad would be alone again. He'd go back to being 'Mathew' Masters for as long as that moniker would hold, an old bachelor, with nothing but a hologram to keep him company.

He tore his eyes away from the battle to stare at the gold watch on his wrist. That little watch held all that remained of his precious Maddie – a stupid computer program. It was all he'd been allowed to keep.

But Vlad wasn't fooling himself. He was far too old to do that. That hologram wasn't Maddie and, to be perfectly honest with himself, the hologram hurt to look at more often than anything else. After an entire lifetime living with a computer image, Vlad was willing to admit that it wasn't enough. A fancy computer, a life of luxury, a woman he could never have... The bright spot in all of his memories were those precious months when he'd found someone smart enough and stubborn enough to stand in his way.

He was finally old enough to admit it and he was finally old enough to realize that he'd been given a chance to have that back… and the one chance was slipping away.

For the first time in decades, Vlad closed his eyes and reached inside himself, searching for something he swore he'd never use again. It took a long moment, nearly a dozen strained heartbeats, before his mind closed on the cool, powerful feeling flooding around inside of him.

Light danced on his body, cold and tingling, and Vlad finally opened his eyes. He glanced down at his body, grimacing at how time had affected him so much in both forms, and clumsily took to the air.

Unfortunately, it was too late.

* * *

Danny's world was black as his heart struggled to keep breathing, his battered lungs gasping pointlessly for oxygen. His fingers reached for the Thermos, miraculously snagging the strap and pulling to towards himself. Danny rolled onto his side, unable to breathe, focused solely on the task of loosening the lid. _I've got to catch him NOW!_

"I don't get why you're still trying," Dark Dan Phantom laughed, "you can't win."

Weakly yanking at the lid of the Thermos, Danny couldn't help but agree. Something inside of him suddenly gave way and the pain doubled, Danny loosing his ghost form in a sparkle of supernatural light. His body screamed in pure agony, his human form feeling everything so much more than his ghost form had. The Thermos fell from his limp hands to lie uselessly on the ground beside him. "No…"

"Yes," Dark Danny hissed. "Don't you get it yet? I'm _inevitable_."

"No you're not," Danny coughed, using his arm to pulling the Thermos closer to him, watching the muddy device get a coat of his red, human blood in the process. Every movement was agony, but Danny managed to get his numb hands back on the lid and grasp it just enough to twist, finally uncapping the device.

A boot came down to slam onto his fingers, bones snapping. Danny was too hurt to feel it – in too much pain to scream.

"Don't even think about it," the ghost whispered, leaning over. "I'm not going back in that thing." Blue eyes met red, understanding passing between the two.

It was over.

Danny's head slowly dropped back to the ground, listening to his own heart stammering through its last few beats, the pain that was racking through his body finally beginning to fade as a cold numbness slipped over him. His eyes stared upwards into the fiery hair of his future, sadness in his heart in knowing that it would be the last thing he'd ever see.

The ghost chuckled and removed his foot, arching an eyebrow and turning away. "Pathetic," the ghost hissed. "Truly pathetic."

The Thermos tipped upwards slightly on the muddy ground, Dark Dan Phantom walking straight into its path. With a grunt of pain and a wash of blackness, Danny's broken hand pressed the button on the side of the Thermos, activating it for the last time.

With a scream to rival the dying of the ghost zone all those years before, Danny's future self was sucked into the Thermos in a wash of blue light. Bloody fingers feebly screwed the lid back on before falling to the ground, never to move again.

One, two, three breaths rattled in Danny's throat before his heart finally stopped beating. Danny's body twitched a few times, lying in the growing pool of blood, before falling still. Just before his mind descended into a cloud of darkness forever, he heard a familiar voice scream for an ambulance. He felt a wash of annoyance – _Why hadn't she left when I'd told her to?_ – but then let it fade as he realized that this was Sam Manson he was thinking about. She wouldn't leave for anything. He thought momentarily about telling her that he was sorry it had to end like this, but he couldn't.

Cold arms curled around him, picking him up, and he heard a voice from his past whisper in his ear. "You did a good job, sweetheart. Relax – it's over now."

And it was.


	14. Epilogue

Death was a lot more _black_ than Danny would have guessed. He thought for a moment his eyes were closed, but he reached up with trembling hands and checked: they weren't. They were open and peering into the darkness, searching for something.

He shook his head and touched his chest, feeling a moment of oddness when no steady beat met his fingers. Even in his ghost form, he'd always had an echo of a heartbeat, always felt the need to breathe. Now it was just silence. He snorted out a bit of a laugh, realizing that he wasn't even unconsciously breathing. "So I'm really dead this time."

His eyes closed for a moment, his mouth twisting in a wry smile. "I thought at least there'd be green," he muttered, his voice sounding odd in the darkness and his eyes opening back up to study the abyss. "Or maybe some harps. What a let down."

"Danny."

The voice caused him to twist around, a smile jumping onto his face when he saw his parents standing behind him. His mother – looking older than he remembered – spread her arms with a glowing smile on her face. Danny felt ground appear under his feet and he ran towards her, throwing himself into her open arms. "Mom! Dad!"

"Oh, Danny, I missed you," she whispered, holding him tightly. Two more arms appeared around them, squeezing powerfully, and Danny's father echoed the sentiment. "I'm so sorry..."

"What happened isn't your fault," Danny said, pushing away from them enough to see their faces and feeling like his smile would crack his face in two. "I'm sorry I never told you."

Jack Fenton ruffled his son's hair and laughed. "It's okay, Dann-o. We should have figured it out on our own."

The world was forming itself around them, grass appearing under Danny's feet, trees and bushes fading into existence around them. It was like Danny was standing in the center of the universe and it was being created just for him. Danny felt tears on his cheeks and he shook his head. "I missed you too."

His mother reached forwards and wiped his cheek, her smile fading slightly. "You did a good job."

A scream echoed through the tiny world and Danny spun around, his eyes wide, his back pressing into his parents' forms. A woman was dissolving into existence on the ground, red blood splattered everywhere. Another figure – Dark Phantom – was curled over her, a demented smile on his face.

"Wh-what?" Danny started, but his father interrupted him.

"Just watch, Danny."

Danny did. Beyond that first scream, it was pure silence. The woman, who Danny finally realized was his grown-up clone, had her mouth open in torment, screaming and unheard. The images moved like an old silence film – sometimes faster than normal, sometimes slower, skipping here and there, pausing for moments. "Dad?" Danny whispered, wanting to turn away. He didn't want to see this.

"Watch, Danny," his mother said softly.

Danielle finally died, her eyes staring blankly into space, and Dark Phantom kicked her a few times. He left her body, stalking towards a small child lying curled up under a bush, an evil grin on his face.

"No…" Danny whispered, his eyes wide, stepping forwards with a hand outstretched.

A hand on his shoulder stopped him. "It's just a memory," his mother murmured. "You can't stop him."

Suddenly the evil ghost was tossed backwards into a tree. Danny flinched and blinked, watching in stunned amazement as a bluish portal appeared in the air and _Clockwork_ stepped out onto the field. "Clockwork?" Danny stuttered. "But…" A hand tightening on his shoulder stopped him from finishing the question.

The ghost of time had a silent, jerky conversation with Dark Dan Phantom, the latter ghost sending evil glares towards the first. Dark Phantom shook his head, apparently arguing, but Clockwork raised his hand and Phantom disappeared without another word.

Clockwork stepped forwards, picking up what looked like a cell phone. He paused for a few moments, typing in a text message, then dropped it back onto the ground. The ghost stooped down next to Danielle's body and shook his head, reaching out and closing her eyes. Then the ghost turned around and picked up the child – the one that Sam Manson would soon be adopting and raising as her own – and settled down in the shadow of a tree to wait.

The memory froze, Clockwork staring down at the young child, and Danny slowly shook his head. "I don't understand."

"Most ghosts are tied to the ghost zone – when the ghost zone was destroyed, so were they. Clockwork is different. He's tied to _time_," Jack said softly. "The only way to destroy Clockwork is to destroy time itself. Besides, do you think he'd didn't see it coming?"

"Why did make me watch this?" Danny asked, unable to tear his eyes off the bloody mess that was left from his clone.

His mother turned him around, looking straight into his eyes. "Because it's important that you understand," she said gently, reaching up to brush some strands of hair out of his eyes. "Do you understand?"

Danny shook his head. "Why does it matter now? I'm dead."

She smiled sadly, her eyes filling with tears. "I know, sweetheart. But you need to understand why this happened, or you won't ever be happy. That _creature_ was created in an alternate reality – a future that never existed and but needed to exist."

"Yeah," Danny said slowly, struggling to follow along. "I knew that. Clockwork explained it to me."

"He can only be destroyed," his father cut in, "the same way. In a future that doesn't exist but needs to."

Danny's forehead wrinkled. "What? That doesn't make any sense."

The two adults laughed softly. Maddie pulled him into a hug, wrapping her arms around him tightly, tears still in her eyes. "I know, sweetie. I know. But it will, I promise."

* * *

Samantha Madel stared at the television from her chair, watching her best friend's last moments play over and over again. The camera feed had played out live to audiences around the country during the fight, and now some enterprising individual had taken the 'best' moments and turned it into a video montage.

She hated it. But she couldn't tear her eyes away.

On the screen, the teenage ghost disappeared in a wash of light, leaving a grainy image of Danny Fenton behind. Sam's fingers clenched on the arms of the rocking chair, her body tight. The song playing in the background crooned something about a hero dying to save the world and Sam finally couldn't take it anymore.

The remote control went flying at the television, right through the holographic screen, slammed into the wall, and tumbled harmlessly to the ground. The fit of anger didn't disrupt the image one bit. She pressed a hand to her eyes and leaned forwards, trying to control her breathing.

"Mom?" Daniel said, poking his head into the room. He sighed when he saw her curled up in the chair, coming over and wrapping his arm around her shoulder. "The psychologist said you should just cry and get it over with."

Sam shot her son a glare and pushed him away, turning so she couldn't see the screen. "Danny doesn't deserve tears."

"It's only been a week, Mom," Daniel said softly. "It's okay to cry over someone that died a week ago."

On the screen, Danny Fenton died in a wash of blue light from the Fenton Thermos. Almost in slow motion, it showed Sam running forwards, screaming for help that couldn't come soon enough. Then Daniel, only moments later, pried his mother away from the dead body of her friend.

"Mom, come on." Daniel reached for the remote control to turn off the television. "Sitting here isn't doing you any good. Jazz is downstairs; come and get something to eat."

The video showed the Daniel holding his mother as she cried. Then Danny's body seemed to rise limply into the air for a moment before completely vanishing. The song whispered words about angels coming to pick up the fallen hero and carry him off to Heaven as Daniel finally found the button, the picture and audio vanishing with a soft _blip_.

Sam moved slowly, getting out of her chair like she was older than she really was. "I'm not hungry," she muttered even as she was lead out of the room and towards the stairs.

With her son's hand firmly in hers, Samantha Madel stepped into her kitchen. Jazz got up out of the kitchen chair, walking over to her little brother's best friend, and wrapped her arms around her. "He died a hero," Jazz whispered. "It's okay. He's happier this way."

Tears suddenly appeared in Sam's eyes. She blinked a few times, trying to keep them at bay, but they became too much. A sob wrenched itself from Sam's throat and, for the first time in seventy years, let herself grieve for Danny Fenton's death.

Then, finally, she moved on.

* * *

Waking up alive was probably the one thing Danny had never expected to accomplish. His mind danced around the half-remembered dream of watching his clone die, but as a painful breath made its way into his lungs, he couldn't decided if it had been real or just a pain-induced nightmare. "Ow…" he groaned. He hurt _everywhere_.

He stifled a moan when he opened his eyes and slowly took in the hotel room he found himself in. The art on the walls was oddly familiar. The bed he was lying in… he'd woken up in it before. He was in Vlad's hotel room.

Danny pushed himself to a sitting position, careful of the hand that was splinted and of the searing pain in his abdomen from where his alternate future self had attempted to disembowel him. "Vlad?" he rasped, but there was no response. "Mom? Dad?" he tried, half-hoping that the dream he'd had was real. He sighed, shaking his head at the silence that answered him. "Stupid nightmare."

A glass of water was next to the bed and Danny slowly reached for it, taking a few grateful sips. The water was warm and stale – it had been sitting out for quite some time – but it washed away the dry taste in his mouth and wetted his throat. "Vlad?"

He set the glass back on the bedside table and spotted the note sitting on the table. He pushed the remnants of the strange dream out of his mind, focusing on the hand-written letter. "Daniel," it read, "this folder contains all the documents for your new life. Daniel Fenton no longer exists."

Danny picked up the folder, quietly running his fingers over the documents inside. Passport, birth certificate, identification cards… even a diploma that stated he'd graduated from high school. All of them made out to a 'Daniel Fen Jameson'. Danny couldn't help the small quirk of a smile at that. Daniel James Fenton. Daniel Fen Jameson. He'd been half-expecting them to read 'Daniel Masters'.

His eyes drifted back to the note. "Samantha and her son found you after the fight. You were most technically dead at the time and they still believe you to be; they have no knowledge of the fact that I took your body and revived you. Whether or not you decide to tell anyone about your existence is up to you."

He stopped reading, quietly staring down at the words written on the note. So like Vlad – direct, to the point, emotionless. "Vlad," Danny said with a scowl, shaking his head. To not have told Sam and Jazz that he was still alive was…

Was…

Danny paused his thoughts, his gaze drifting out towards the window. After all these years, they _knew_ he was dead. That he'd finally found peace.

Perhaps he had.

For a long time, he stared at the light filtering through the closed shades, his mind sort of blank. Then he shook himself and gazed back down at the letter. "The room is paid for until you chose to check out. Stay as long as you need." Danny arched an eyebrow, but kept reading. "A debit card with ten thousand dollars and a cell phone are in the box with a change of clothes and the rest of your affects. They are yours to keep with no repayment necessary. Vlad."

Danny turned the paper over, blinking a little at the abrupt ending, but there was nothing else. Setting the note and the folder back on the table, Danny leaned back against the pillows and stared up at the ceiling. His whole body ached, especially his hand and his stomach, but his mind was churning busily enough to keep the pain at bay.

A whole new life. Leave everyone he thought he knew behind, start over, and go do anything he wanted to. Without his future self…

Danny flinched at the thought and sat back up with a pained wince. What had happened to his future self? He'd been sucked into the Thermos, but what had happened after that?

Blue eyes scanned the room for the box Vlad had mentioned in his letter. He finally spotted it on a chair some distance away. "Vlad?" Danny called one last time, even though he knew the fruitloop was nowhere near. His eyes focused on the box. "I need to know if the Thermos is in there," he whispered to himself.

Struggling to his feet – and nearly passing out at the pain – Danny slowly made his way over to the chair. Gripping the armrest as tightly as possible, Danny stared inside. Lying on top of the clothes Vlad had left was one battered (but clean) Thermos. A flash of relief echoed through him and Danny sagged to the ground.

It took a long several minutes before Danny got up the energy to make it back to the bed and collapse against the pillows. The wounds on his stomach were burning after Danny's attempt to move, the pain disrupting all of the other thoughts that Danny would have liked to think.

Eyes drifted back to the glass of water, half-hoping for a bottle of pain relievers. "Of course not," Danny muttered when he found none, closing his eyes and resigning himself to pain until he drifted off to sleep. "Vlad's not that nice."

* * *

One week later, Danny was standing outside the hotel, a backpack with a change of clothes and a Thermos slung over his back and a dilemma in front of him. His hand was still in its splint and painfully sore, and he walked with a little limp due to his tender stomach, but he was as good as could be expected. He pulled Vlad's cell phone out his pocket and stared down at it, then up at the skyline.

Seventy years had passed since he'd disappeared. A whole lifetime, really, and there was no going back. Maybe, someday, he'd find a way home… but it wouldn't be any time soon.

Sam and Jazz had their own lives, their own places in the universe set, and – honestly – Danny had no part in them anymore. It couldn't have been more obvious during the time he'd spent with them. Their lives were nearly over, his was just beginning. If Vlad was correct, he had decades and decades of life ahead of him – perhaps even centuries. Sam and Jazz would be lucky to live another five or ten years.

Danny's fingers tightened around the small cell phone, but he felt no anger, no sorrow, no desire to change the decision he'd made in the hotel room that morning. He still wanted his _own_ life back, the one from the past, but he didn't want the one he'd been thrust into in this future. It wasn't his life.

His blue eyes came up to look at Amity Park for the last time, his eyes trailing in the direction he figured Jazz and Sam would be. "Have a good life," he said softly, meaning it with all of his heart, then he turned and started walking down the street.

The cell phone and debit card went into the first garbage bin he could locate. He neither wanted nor needed Vlad's help. This was _his_ life and he was going to make the most of it. _Besides_, his brain whispered, _you've got something that needs to be done._

Danny tapped the Fenton Thermos containing his alternate-reality self and thought back on what his father had told him in that strange maybe-was-a-dream. _He can only be destroyed the same way he was created. In a future that doesn't exist but needs to.  
_

_There's a reason you were trapped for seventy years; there's a reason you've finally been freed. Everything you need to destroy that evil ghost forever is here, now. _And besides, maybe Clockwork was out there waiting to send him home if he could do just that.

A small smile appeared on his face as he vanished from sight and then took to the sky for places unknown. For the first time in seventy years, he was free.


End file.
